Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really?

Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really?

by Ray McGovern, April , 2010

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/04/26/iran-a-threat-i-mean-really/

With all the current hype about the "threat" from Iran, it is time to review the record – and especially the significant bits and pieces that find neither ink nor air in our Israel-friendly Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

First, on the chance you missed it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said publicly that Iran "doesn’t directly threaten the United States." Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.

Fortunately for her, most of her FCM fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission. And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)

But she said it. It’s on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there. Granted, the substance was so off-message that it would probably not have been welcomed by editors back home.

In a rambling comment, Clinton had charged (incorrectly) that, despite President Barack Obama’s reaching out to the Iranian leaders, he had elicited no sign they were willing to engage:

"Part of the goal – not the only goal, but part of the goal – that we were pursuing was to try to influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon. And, as I said in my speech, you know, the evidence is accumulating that that [pursuing a nuclear weapon] is exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn’t directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond." (Emphasis added.)

Qatar Afraid? Not So Much

The moderator turned to Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani and invited him to give his perspective on "the danger that the secretary just alluded to … if Iran gets the bomb."

Al-Thani pointed to Iran’s "official answer" that it is not seeking to have a nuclear bomb; instead, the Iranians "explain to us that their intention is to use these facilities for their peaceful reactors for electricity and medical use…."

"We have good relations with Iran," he added. "And we have continuous dialogue with the Iranians." The prime minister added, "The best thing for this problem is a direct dialogue between the United States and Iran," and "dialogue through messenger is not good."

Al-Thani stressed that, "For a small country, stability and peace are very important," and intimated – diplomatically but clearly – that he was at least as afraid of what Israel and the U.S. might do, as what Iran might do.

All right. Secretary Clinton concedes that Iran does not directly threaten the United States. Now who are these "friends" to whom she refers? First and foremost, Israel, of course. How often have we heard Israeli officials warn that they would consider nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands an "existential" threat?

Time to do a reality check. Former French President Jacques Chirac is perhaps the best-known world statesman to hold up to public ridicule the notion that Israel, with between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, would consider Iran’s possession of a nuclear bomb an existential threat.

In a recorded interview with the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Le Nouvel Observateur, on Jan. 29, 2007, Chirac put it this way: "Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

Chirac concluded that Iran’s possession of a nuclear bomb would not be "very dangerous."

Chirac and a Hard Place

Immediately, the former French president found himself caught between Chirac and a hard place. He was forced to retract, but chose to do so in so clumsy a way as to demonstrate rather clearly that he stood by his initial candor on the subject.

On Jan. 30, Chirac told the New York Times:

"I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on record. … I don’t think I spoke about Israel yesterday. Maybe I did so, but I don’t think so. I have no recollection of that."

Israel’s leaders must have been laughing up their sleeve at that. Their continued ability to intimidate presidents of other countries – including President Barack Obama – is truly remarkable, particularly when it comes to helping to keep Israel’s precious "secret," that it possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenals.

Shortly after Obama became U.S. president, veteran reporter Helen Thomas asked him if he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons, and Obama awkwardly responded that he didn’t want to "speculate." Thomas later commented, "I did not ask him to speculate; he is supposed to know!"

More recently, on April 13, 2010, Obama looked like a deer caught in the headlights when the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson, taking a leaf out of Helen Thomas’ book, asked him if he would "call on Israel to declare its nuclear program and sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Watch the video, unless you have no stomach for seeing our normally articulate president stutter his way through an improvised mini-filibuster, and then grovel: "And, as far as Israel goes, I’m not going to comment on their program…"

The following day the Jerusalem Post smirked, "President Dodges Question About Israel’s Nuclear Program." The article continued: "Obama took a few seconds to formulate his response, but quickly took the weight off Israel and called on all countries to abide by the NPT."

The Jerusalem Post added that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak chose that same day to send a clear message "also to those who are our friends and allies," that Israel will not be pressured into signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

(Also the following day, the Washington Post made no reference to the question from its own reporter or Obama’s stumbling non-answer.)

Consistent Obsequiousness

In his response to Scott Wilson, Obama felt it necessary to tack on the observation that his words regarding the NPT represented the "consistent policy" of prior U.S. administrations. This reflects the de rigueur attempt to avert any adverse reaction from the Likud Lobby to even the slightest suggestion that Obama might be ratcheting up, even a notch or two, any pressure on Israel to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal and sign the NPT.

Actually, the greatest consistency to the policy has been U.S. obsequious promotion of a flagrant double standard. Clearly, Washington and the FCM find it easier to draw black-and-white distinctions between noble Israel and evil Iran, if there’s no acknowledgment that Israel already has nukes and Iran has disavowed any intention of getting them.

This never ending hypocrisy shows itself in various telling ways. I am reminded of an early Sunday morning talk show over five years ago at which Sen. Richard Lugar, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked why Iran might think it has to acquire nuclear weapons. Perhaps Lugar had not yet had his morning coffee, because he almost blew it with his answer:

"Well, you know, Israel has…" Oops. At that point he caught himself and abruptly stopped. The pause was embarrassing, but he then recovered and tried to limit the damage.

Aware that he could not simply leave the words "Israel has" twisting slowly in the wind, Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."

Is "alleged" to have? Lugar was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1985 to 1987; and then again from 2003 to 2007. No one told him that Israel has nuclear weapons? But, of course, he did know, but he also knew that U.S. policy on disclosure of this "secret" – over four decades – has been to protect Israel’s nuclear "ambiguity."

Small wonder that our most senior officials and lawmakers – and Lugar, remember, is one of the more honest among them – are widely seen as hypocritical, the word Scott Wilson used to frame his question to Obama.

The Fawning Corporate Media, of course, ignores this hypocrisy, which is their standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in unflattering contexts. But the Iranians, Syrians, and others in the Middle East pay very close attention.

Obama Overachieving

As for Obama, the die was cast during the presidential campaign when, on June 3, 2008, in the obligatory appearance before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he threw raw red meat to the Likud Lobby.

Someone wrote into his speech: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." This obsequious gesture went well beyond the policy of prior U.S. administrations on this highly sensitive issue, and Obama had to backtrack two days later.

“Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations,” Obama said when asked if he was saying the Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

The person who inserted the offending sentence into his speech was neither identified nor fired, as he or she should have been. My guess is that the sentence inserter has only risen in power within the Obama administration.

So, why am I reprising this sorry history? Because this is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees as the context of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Even when Israel acts in a manner that flies in the face of stated U.S. policy, which calls on all nations to sign the NPT and to submit to transparency in their nuclear programs, Netanyahu has every reason to believe that Washington’s power players will back down and the U.S. FCM will intuitively understand its role in the cover-up.

L’Affaire Biden – when the vice president was mousetrapped and humiliated when Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem shortly after he arrived in Israel to reaffirm U.S. solidarity with Israel – was dismissed as a mere "spat" by the neoconservative Washington Post. (If the Post has a vestigial claim to distinction, it is how well it is plugged in to the establishment.)

Making Amends

Rather than Israel making amends to the United States, it has been vice versa.

Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, trudged over to an affair organized by the AIPAC offshoot think-tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) last Wednesday to make a major address.

I got to wondering, after reading his text, which planet Jones lives on. He devoted his first nine paragraphs to praise for WINEP’s "objective analysis" and scholarship, adding that "our nation – and indeed the world – needs institutions like yours now more than ever."

Most importantly, Jones gave pride of place to "preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them," only then tacking on the need to forge "lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians." He was particularly effusive in stating that "There is no space – no space – between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security."

Those were the exact words used by Vice President Joe Biden in Israel on March 9, before he was mousetrapped.

"No Space" – a Problem

The message is inescapably clear: Netanyahu has every reason to believe that the Siamese-twin relationship with the United States is back to normal, despite the suggestion from CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus earlier this year that total identification with Israel costs the lives of American troops.

Petraeus’ main message was that this identification fosters the widespread impression that the U.S. is incapable of standing up to Israel. The briefing that he sponsored reportedly noted, "America was not only viewed as weak, but there was a growing perception that its military posture in the region was eroding."

However, in the address to WINEP, National Security Adviser Jones evidenced no concern on that score. Worse still, in hyping the threat from Iran, he seemed to be channeling Dick Cheney’s rhetoric before the attack on Iraq, simply substituting an "n" for the "q." Thus:

"Iran’s continued defiance of its international obligations on its nuclear program and its support of terrorism represents [sic] a significant regional and global threat. A nuclear-armed Iran could transform the landscape of the Middle East … fatally wounding the global non-proliferation regime, and emboldening terrorists and extremists who threaten the United States and our allies."

A More Ominous Mousetrap?

Jacques Chirac may have gone a bit too far in belittling Israel’s concern over the possibility of Iran acquiring a small nuclear capability, but it is truly hard to imagine that Israel would feel incapable of deterring what would be a suicidal Iranian attack.

The real threat to Israel’s "security interests" would be something quite different. If Iran acquired one or two nuclear weapons, Israel might be deprived of the full freedom of action it now enjoys in attacking its Arab neighbors.

Even a rudimentary Iranian capability could work as a deterrent the next time the Israelis decide they would like to attack Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza. Clearly, the Israelis would prefer not to have to look over their shoulder at what Tehran might contemplate doing in the way of retaliation.

However, there has been a big downside for Israel in hyping the "existential threat" supposedly posed by Iran. This exaggerated danger and the fear it engenders have caused many highly qualified Israelis, who find a ready market for their skills abroad, to emigrate.

That could well become a true "existential threat" to a small country traditionally dependent on immigration to populate it and on its skilled population to make its economy function. The departure of well-educated, secular Jews also could tip the country’s political balance more in favor of the ultra-conservative settlers who are already an important part of Netanyahu’s Likud coalition.

Still, at this point, Netanyahu has the initiative regarding what will happen next with Iran, assuming Tehran doesn’t fully capitulate to the U.S.-led pressure campaign. Netanyahu could decide if and when to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, thus forcing Washington’s hand in deciding whether to back Israel if Iran retaliates.

Netanyahu may not be impressed – or deterred – by anything short of a public pronouncement from Obama that the U.S. will not support Israel if it provokes war with Iran. The more Obama avoids such blunt language, the more Netanyahu is likely to view Obama as a weakling who can be played politically.

If I am right in thinking that Netanyahu feels himself in the catbird seat, then an Israeli attack on Iran seems more likely than not. For instance, would Netanyahu judge that Obama lacked the political spine to have the U.S. forces controlling Iraqi airspace shoot down Israeli aircraft on their way to Iran? Many analysts feel that Obama would back down and let the warplanes proceed to their targets.

Then, if Iran sought to retaliate, would Obama feel compelled to come to Israel’s defense and "finish the job" by devastating what was left of Iran’s nuclear and military capacity? Again, many analysts believe that Obama would see little choice, politically.

Yet, whatever we think the answers are, the only calculation that matters is that of Israel’s leaders. My guess is Netanyahu would not anticipate a strong reaction from President Obama, who has, time and again, showed himself to have a preference for caving in – to be more politician than statesman.

James Jones is, after all, Obama’s national security adviser, and is throwing off signals that can only encourage Netanyahu to believe that Jones’s boss would scurry to find some way to avoid the domestic political opprobrium that would accrue, were the president to seem less than fully supportive of Israel.

Key Judgments on Iran Nuclear Program

Netanyahu has other reasons to take heart with the political direction in Washington.

According to Sunday’s Washington Post, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing what is called a Memorandum to Holders of the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 on Iran, in other words an update to that full-scale NIE – the one in which all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies girded their loins and unanimously spoke truth to power about Iran’s nuclear program.

The update is now projected for completion this August, delayed from last fall reportedly because of new incoming information coming from sources that the Post describes as "motivated by antipathy toward the government" of Iran. Does this not sound familiar? Think of the similar Iraqi "sources" who provided us with such stellar intelligence on Baghdad’s nuclear program.

The Post article recalls that the 2007 NIE presented the "startling conclusion" that Iran had halted work on developing a nuclear warhead. That reportedly occurred four years prior, in the fall of 2003. Why "startling"? Because this contradicted what President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had been saying, repeatedly, for years – right up until the time the Key Judgments of the NIE were sanitized and made public.

It is a hopeful thing that senior intelligence officials from both CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have, as the Post puts it, "avoided contradicting the language used in the 2007 NIE." Some, though, are said to be privately asserting their belief that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Apparently, "faith-based intelligence" is not yet dead.

The Post says there is an expectation that the previous NIE "will be corrected" to indicate a darker interpretation of Iranian nuclear program.

It seems a safe, if sad, bet that the same Likud-friendly forces that attacked experienced diplomat Chas Freeman as a "realist" and got him "un-appointed," after National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair had named him director of the National Intelligence Council, will try to Netanyahu-ize the upcoming Memorandum to Holders.

The National Intelligence Council has purview over such memoranda, as well as over NIEs. Without Freeman, or anyone similarly substantive and strong, it is doubtful that the intelligence community will not be able to resist the political pressures to conform.

Resisting Pressure

Nevertheless, the intelligence admirals, generals, and other high officials seem to be avoiding the temptation to play that game, so far.

The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Ronald Burgess, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, hewed to the intelligence analysts’ judgments in their testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.

Indeed, their answer to the question as to how soon Iran could have a deliverable nuclear weapon, in fact, sounded very familiar.

“Experience says it is going to take you three to five years” to move from having enough highly enriched uranium to having a “deliverable weapon that is usable … something that can actually create a detonation, an explosion that would be considered a nuclear weapon,” Cartwright told the panel.

What makes Cartwright’s assessment familiar – and relatively reassuring – is that five years ago, a previous DIA director told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade" – this decade. Now, we’re early in that decade and Iran’s nuclear timetable, if you assume it does intend to build a bomb, has been pushed back to the middle of this decade.

Indeed, the Iranians have been about five years away from a nuclear weapon for several decades now, according to periodic intelligence estimates. They just never seem to get much closer. But there’s no trace of embarrassment among U.S. policymakers or any notice of this slipping timetable by the FCM.

Not that NIEs – or U.S. officials – matter much in terms of a potential military showdown with Iran. The "decider" here is Netanyahu, unless Obama stands up and tells him, publicly, "If you attack Iran, you’re on your own."

Don’t hold your breath....

The US Threat to Latin America

Apr. 2010 , by Grace Livingstone -

The military agreement between the United States and Colombia has caused outcry in Latin America. Many governments suspect that the US is trying to cement its military hegemony in the region and maintain its ability to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.

The State Department says that the deal is all about security within Colombia and does not affect other countries, but Pentagon documents show that the US has far wider and more ominous objectives.

An US air force budget justification Bill, sent to Congress last year, states that Palanquero airbase in Colombia "provides an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout south America."

Full spectrum operations is Pentagon jargon for dominating the battle space on land, sea, air and space and can include the use of nuclear weapons.

The document went on: "Development of this CSL [Palanquero air base] provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical subregion of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics-funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters."

Although the offending text was hurriedly deleted before the Bill was passed, the document showed that the US was not intending to confine its operations to Colombia and regards Palanquero as an important strategic asset for its regional, and even global, operations.

This analysis is confirmed by another US air force document which was prepared for a US military conference last year.

The global en route strategy white paper, prepared by Air Mobility Command, shows how Colombia's Palanquero base will slot into a worldwide network of "en route" air bases giving the US airforce rapid "global access" to areas of "strategic interest."

The new Defence Co-operation Agreement (DCA) allows the US to use seven named bases in Colombia, but US troops are not limited to these seven bases. They can use as many military bases or facilities as they like in Colombia, with the agreement of the host government.

The White House says that the existing cap of 800 US soldiers and 600 civilian contractors in Colombia will remain, but there is no mention of a cap in this latest agreement.

While all eyes have been on the Middle East, US involvement in Colombia's counter-insurgency war has been gradually growing. US troops and special forces are involved in reconnaissance, operating radar sites, transporting Colombian troops and logistical back-up to combat operations.

US troops already use many Colombian bases, including Tres Esquinas, in Farc-dominated territory in the south and Arauca close to the Venezuelan border.

The wording of the agreement is vague, giving great scope for US action. The bases can be used "in order to address common threats to peace, stability, freedom and democracy."

These parameters are so broad that they could include anything from counter-insurgency to operations against "anti-US governments."

The deal does have a non-intervention clause, stating that "the parties shall comply with their obligations under this agreement in a manner consistent with the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity of states, and non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states."

Colombia's neighbours, however, are not reassured by this and do not think the wording is watertight.

Venezuela, which is frequently defined as an "anti-US government" in State Department and Pentagon documents, already has two US air bases immediately to the north in Aruba and Curacao and it views with growing unease the US military-build up just over its western border.

But it is not just Venezuela. Almost the countries of the Union of South American Nations, including Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay, have expressed concern.

Argentina and Brazil have issued a strongly worded statement saying that foreign bases are "incompatible with the principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states within the region."

The US military presence is also bolstered by the Fourth Fleet of the US navy which was reactivated in 2008 despite protests by Latin American governments.

It patrols the waters surrounding Latin America and the Caribbean and includes nuclear submarines in its fleet. Surveying the hemisphere from the air are US air force "airborne warning and control system" radar planes.

The pretext for the US presence in Colombia is counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism. Colombia has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere and, on some counts, the murder of trade unionists for example, the worst in the world.

The US has been pouring in military aid - $6 billion between 1997-2010, more than all the rest of Latin America put together.

Yet in that time human rights abuses by the Colombian army have increased, according to the United Nations high commission for human rights.

Extra-judicial executions by the army are "widespread," says the UN, and perpetrated by "military units throughout the country."

Collusion with paramilitary forces is still rife and recent political scandals show "the extent of paramilitary infiltration of the state" - extraordinarily powerful language for a body such as the UN to use.

Within Colombia, there is disquiet at the expanding US presence. Most of the text of the agreement focuses on what taxes the US will be exempt from.

US military forces or civilian personnel won't have to pay road tolls, harbour fees, overflight or landing fees, entry or departure fees or import taxes. They won't need licences to construct satellites and the Colombian authorities will not be able to inspect US vehicles or aircraft.

All US personnel will be immune from criminal prosecution, if this clause is ratified by the Colombian authorities. But perhaps the country whose sovereignty is most threatened is Colombia itself.

Grace Livingstone is the author of America's Backyard: The United States And Latin America From The Monroe Doctrine To The War On Terror (Zed Books).

U.S. isn't a neutral mediator between Israelis and Palestinians

U.S. isn't a neutral mediator between Israelis and Palestinians

By Zvi Bar'el
"We can't desire peace more than the parties involved," "we can't force the parties to peace," - these and many similar slogans were the ABCs that generations of American leaders instilled in their Israeli counterparts. If even the United States "can't want peace more than the parties," what's there to fuss about?

But who are the parties involved? Isn't the U.S. administration also a party, with a strategic interest in peace between Israel and the Arabs? When is an American interest at stake and when an interest of the parties? When is the United States a partner and when is it a mediator, willing even to pay for the right to mediate?

The United States is not a neutral mediator that supplies the parties with its good services, a table to negotiate on, some snacks and muzak. The United States is an interested party, a superpower whose position in the Middle East and around the globe is based on its economic and military strength. It's also based on the Americans' ability to leverage those advantages for political action, to set the world's agenda and win legitimacy for waging wars and making peace.

The United States drafts the map of world threats, from Iran and Afghanistan to Russia's stockpile of nuclear missiles and Al-Qaida in Yemen. The United States also recruits other countries and international opinion to combat these threats. It decided to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its threat list, and contrary to its own slogan, America is actively forcing a solution on the parties - and fortunately so.

We may argue about Washington's vision and style, and wonder whether it was wise to pick construction in East Jerusalem of all battles or to treat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like an unwelcome door-to-door salesman. But we can't fail to appreciate U.S. President Barack Obama's diplomatic determination and the political risk he has taken by marking Israel as a peace-refusenik.

The United States is not doing that "for the parties." On the face of it, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a strategic threat. More Israelis or Palestinians dying, or more Qasams in the south or Katyushas in the north won't bring down any state - most certainly not the United States. Solving the conflict won't stop the Iranian nuclear race and won't persuade India or Pakistan to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Syria won't cut ties with Tehran even if Israel recognizes Hamas.

But the conflict becomes a strategic threat when it endangers America's stature on the global stage. When this is the threat, the United States can no longer afford merely to let the sides "desire" peace and gloomily watch from the sidelines as they continue to eat into each other's flesh. It's not Obama's personal pride that's at stake, and it's not the enormous U.S. aid to Israel. The Americans now see that when put to the test, this aid is not enough to help them implement their policy.

Israel is challenging the United States' strategic status. This provocation goes beyond the question of Israeli sovereignty versus American might. Idiotically, Israel is competing against itself because U.S. status is a fundamental part of Israel's strength. And when Israel is ready to demolish this foundation for the benefit of the bullies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank outposts, Israel puts its own citizens at risk.

Faced with Israeli foolishness, Washington can no longer afford to merely shrug. Too many American interests are at stake. So how will Obama deal with the Israeli naysayer? Will he renounce his demand to freeze construction? Will he present Israel with an obligatory work plan for reaching peace with the Palestinians? And to cut to the chase, will we see a rerun of the famous scene from the tenure of secretary of state James Baker, who left Israel a phone number it could call when it got serious about peace?

Washington has since taught the world that when it draws its map of interests, it is willing to use its military to obtain them. If Israeli-Palestinian peace is not that much of an interest, Washington should make this clear to both parties, lest they put too much hope on American maneuvering or, heaven forbid, labor under the impression that American pressure is mere pretense....

...Is it "Israel" that has become a negation of the US presence in the Mideast or the particular faction that favors the nasty combination of ethnic cleansing plus incitement to a US war with Iran?

To what degree does a body of opinion exist in Israel today that would extend from, say, Zvi Bar'el to Gideon Levy ? That would constitute a political position on Israel's proper role in the world that Americans concerned with national security could comfortably accept--a position that could both offer security to the Israeli people and leave the U.S. free to extricate itself from the trap of hostility toward activist Islam that today so imperils the security of Americans.....?.

Graceful Decline :The end of Pax Americana

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/the-next-empire/8018

The end of Pax Americana

BY CHRISTOPHER LAYNE

http://amconmag.com/article/2010/may/01/00030/

The United States emerged from World War II in a position of global dominance. From this unparalleled military and economic power came a Pax Americana that has endured for more than six decades. It seemed the sun would never set on the U.S. empire.

But America is increasingly unable to play the hegemon’s assigned role. Militarily, a hegemon is responsible for stabilizing key regions and guarding the global commons. Economically, it offers public goods by opening its domestic market to other states, supplying liquidity for the world economy, and providing the reserve currency. A hegemon is supposed to solve international crises, not cause them. It is supposed to be the lender of last resort, not the biggest borrower. Faced with wars it cannot win or quit and an economy begging rescue, the United States no longer fits the part.

Still, many in the mainstream foreign-policy community see these as temporary setbacks and believe that U.S. primacy will endure for years to come. The American people are awakening to a new reality more quickly than the academy. According to a December 2009 Pew survey, 41 percent of the public believes that the U.S. plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago.

The epoch of American dominance is drawing to a close, and international politics is entering a period of transition: no longer unipolar but not yet fully multipolar. President Barack Obama’s November 2009 trip to China provided both substantive and emblematic evidence of the shift. As the Financial Times observed, “Coming at a moment when Chinese prestige is growing and the U.S. is facing enormous difficulties, Mr. Obama’s trip has symbolized the advent of a more multi-polar world where U.S. leadership has to co-exist with several rising powers, most notably China.” In the same Pew study, 44 percent of Americans polled said that China was the leading economic power; just 27 percent chose the United States.

Much of America’s decline can be attributed to its own self-defeating policies, but as the U.S. stumbles, others—notably China, India, and Russia—are rising. This shift in the global balance of power will dramatically affect international politics: the likelihood of intense great-power security competitions—and even war—will increase; the current era of globalization will end; and the post-1945 Pax Americana will be replaced by an international order that reflects the interests, values, and norms of emerging powers.

China’s economy has been growing much more rapidly than the United States’ over the last two decades and continues to do so, maintaining audacious 8 percent growth projections in the midst of a global recession. Leading economic forecasters predict that it will overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, measured by overall GDP, sometime around 2020. Already in 2008, China passed the U.S. as the world’s leading manufacturing nation—a title the United States had enjoyed for over a century—and this year China will displace Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. Everything we know about the trajectories of rising great powers tells us that China will use its increasing wealth to build formidable military power and that it will seek to become the dominant power in East Asia.

Optimists contend that once the U.S. recovers from what historian Niall Ferguson calls the “Great Repression”—not quite a depression but more than a recession—we’ll be able to answer the Chinese challenge. The country, they remind us, faced a larger debt-GDP ratio after World War II yet embarked on an era of sustained growth. They forget that the postwar era was a golden age of U.S. industrial and financial dominance, trade surpluses, and persistent high growth rates. Those days are gone. The United States of 2010 and the world in which it lives are far different from those of 1945.

Weaknesses in the fundamentals of the American economy have been accumulating for more than three decades. In the 1980s, these problems were acutely diagnosed by a number of writers—notably David Calleo, Paul Kennedy, Robert Gilpin, Samuel Huntington, and James Chace—who predicted that these structural ills would ultimately erode the economic foundations of America’s global preeminence. A spirited late-1980s debate was cut short, when, in quick succession, the Soviet Union collapsed, Japan’s economic bubble burst, and the U.S. experienced an apparent economic revival during the Clinton administration. Now the delayed day of reckoning is fast approaching.

Even in the best case, the United States will emerge from the current crisis with fundamental handicaps. The Federal Reserve and Treasury have pumped massive amounts of dollars into circulation in hope of reviving the economy. Add to that the $1 trillion-plus budget deficits that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts the United States will incur for at least a decade. When the projected deficits are bundled with the persistent U.S. current-account deficit, the entitlements overhang (the unfunded future liabilities of Medicare and Social Security), and the cost of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is reason to worry about the United States’ fiscal stability. As the CBO says, “Even if the recovery occurs as projected and the stimulus bill is allowed to expire, the country will face the highest debt/GDP ratio in 50 years and an increasingly unsustainable and urgent fiscal problem.”

The dollar’s vulnerability is the United States’ geopolitical Achilles’ heel. Its role as the international economy’s reserve currency ensures American preeminence, and if it loses that status, hegemony will be literally unaffordable. As Cornell professor Jonathan Kirshner observes, the dollar’s vulnerability “presents potentially significant and underappreciated restraints upon contemporary American political and military predominance.”

Fears for the dollar’s long-term health predated the current financial and economic crisis. The meltdown has amplified them and highlighted two new factors that bode ill for continuing reserve-currency status. First, the other big financial players in the international economy are either military rivals (China) or ambiguous allies (Europe) that have their own ambitions and no longer require U.S. protection from the Soviet threat. Second, the dollar faces an uncertain future because of concerns that its value will diminish over time. Indeed, China, which has holdings estimated at nearly $2 trillion, is worried that America will leave it with huge piles of depreciated dollars. China’s vote of no confidence is reflected in its recent calls to create a new reserve currency.

In coming years, the U.S. will be under increasing pressure to defend the dollar by preventing runaway inflation. This will require it to impose fiscal self-discipline through some combination of budget cuts, tax increases, and interest-rate hikes. Given that the last two options could choke off renewed growth, there is likely to be strong pressure to slash the federal budget.

But it will be almost impossible to make meaningful cuts in federal spending without deep reductions in defense expenditures. Discretionary non-defense domestic spending accounts for only about 20 percent of annual federal outlays. So the United States will face obvious “guns or butter” choices. As Kirshner puts it, the absolute size of U.S. defense expenditures are “more likely to be decisive in the future when the U.S. is under pressure to make real choices about taxes and spending. When borrowing becomes more difficult, and adjustment more difficult to postpone, choices must be made between raising taxes, cutting non-defense spending, and cutting defense spending.” Faced with these hard decisions, Americans will find themselves afflicted with hegemony fatigue.

The United States will be compelled to overhaul its strategy dramatically, and rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis, the U.S. should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion. A new American global posture would involve strategic retrenchment, burden-shifting, and abandonment of the so-called “global counterinsurgency” being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a first step, the U.S. will need to pull back from its current security commitments to NATO, Japan, and South Korea. This is not isolationism. The United States undertook the defense of these regions under conditions very different from those prevailing today. In the late 1940s, all were threatened by the Soviet Union—in the case of South Korea and Japan, by China as well—and were too weak to defend themselves. The U.S. did the right thing by extending its security umbrella and “drawing a line in the sand” to contain the Soviet Union. But these commitments were never intended to be permanent. They were meant as a temporary shield to enable Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea to build up their own economic and military strength and assume responsibility for defending themselves.

There are several explanations for why the U.S. did not follow through with this policy. Fundamentally, during the Pax Americana there was no need. As the U.S. declines, however, it will be compelled to return to its original intent. If we remember that an eventual pullback was the goal of U.S. policy, strategic retrenchment in the early 21st century looks less like a radical break than a fulfillment of strategic goals adopted in the late 1940s.

Burden-shifting—not burden-sharing—is the obvious corollary of strategic retrenchment. American policy should seek to compel our allies to assume responsibility for their own security and take the lead role in providing security in their regions. To implement this strategic devolution, the U.S. should disengage gradually from its current commitments in order to give an adequate transition period for its allies to step up to the plate. It should facilitate this transition by providing advanced weapons and military technology to friendly states in Europe and Asia.

With respect to Islamic terrorism, we need to keep our priorities straight. Terrorism is not the most pressing national-security threat facing the United States. Great powers can be defeated only by other great powers—not by nonstate terrorists or by minor powers. The U.S. needs to be careful not to pay more attention to Islamic terrorists than to emerging great powers. Here the Obama administration and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are getting it wrong.

Although many in the U.S. foreign-policy community—especially the counterinsurgency lobby, based at the Center for a New American Security, and the American Enterprise Institute—call for the U.S. to “win” the war on terror, there can be no decisive victory over terrorism. The trick is finding the right strategy to minimize its effects on American security. The strategy of the Bush and Obama administrations—invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan—is exactly the wrong approach. The U.S. is bad at counterinsurgency. Foreign occupying powers seldom are good at it, which is the main reason big powers usually lose these kinds of small wars. The U.S. also is not good at nation-building. Rather than quelling terrorism, a long-term foreign military presence in places like Iraq and Afghanistan inflames nationalism and anti-Americanism.

The Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author Linda Bilmes have estimated that the direct and indirect costs of the Iraq War will exceed $3 trillion. No similar projection of the Afghanistan war’s costs exists. But the Obama administration’s fall 2009 internal debate about whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan offered a preview of coming attractions. During these deliberations, some officials argued that the U.S. needed to limit its commitment because the cost of the war effort has serious budgetary implications. According to the New York Times, when presented with an OMB projection that showed existing troop deployments and nation-building expenses combined with the cost of sending an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan for a decade would total $1 trillion, “the president seemed in sticker shock, watching his domestic agenda vanishing in front of him.”

That the United States needs a post-Pax Americana foreign policy should be obvious. But there is no guarantee that the U.S. will adjust to a transforming world. Even as the globe is being turned upside down by material factors, the foreign policies of individual states are shaped by the ideas leaders hold about their own nations’ identity and place in world politics. More than most, America’s foreign policy is the product of such ideas, and U.S. foreign-policy elites have constructed their own myths of empire to justify the United States’ hegemonic role. To move successfully to a post-Pax Americana foreign policy, Americans will need to move beyond these myths.

The foundational American myth of empire is exceptionalism, the belief, dating back to the Puritans, that the U.S. is different, better, and morally superior to the rest of the world. Americans have always looked at the outside world suspiciously and viewed it as a source of contagion: war, imperialism, militarism, religious intolerance, non-democratic forms of governance, and latterly totalitarianism, genocide, and terrorism. All these bad things, we believe, come from “over there.”

We have long thought that we cannot live safely in a world of such imperfections and that it is therefore our national duty to cure these ills by using American power to construct a world order based on our values. U.S. foreign-policy elites have extrapolated from our national experience and concluded, as Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff wrote some 45 years ago, that the United States is a model for the world and “America’s wants and values are universal”—a point George W. Bush made repeatedly in justifying his policy of exporting democracy at the point of a bayonet. Americans believe that our political and economic systems provide “a prototypical solution for the world’s disorders.” If we could just give the rest of the world a makeover so it looked like the United States, all would be well.

These assumptions invest American foreign policy with a tendency to see the world in terms of good versus evil. And because the U.S. looks through this prism, it believes it has the obligation to prevail in this global struggle. America’s security and way of life are purportedly endangered by the existence of hostile ideologies anywhere in the world because peace and freedom are allegedly indivisible. Intervention is thus the United States’ default in foreign policy.

We attempt to tame the world by exporting democracy because—we are told—democracies do not fight each other. We export our model of free-market capitalism because—we are told—states that are economically interdependent do not fight each other. We work multilaterally through international institutions because—we are told—these promote cooperation and trust among states. None of these propositions is self-evident. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that they are wrong. But they are illusions that “express the deepest beliefs which Americans, as a nation, hold about the world.” So we cling to the idea that our hegemony is necessary for our own and everyone else’s security. The consequence has been to contribute to the very imperial overstretch that is accelerating the United States’ decline.

Because that U.S. enjoyed such vast superiority for such a long time, it had the luxury of acting on its delusions without paying too high a price. (That is, if you discount the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial or the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel who have suffered disfiguring wounds or been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.) But as my graduate school mentor, Kenneth Waltz, one of the towering figures in the study of international politics, used to tell us about American foreign policy, “When you are big, strong, and powerful, you can afford to make the same dumb mistakes over and over again. But when your power declines, you begin to pay a price for repeating your mistakes.”

U.S. decline means that in the 21st century, the United States will pay a high price if it endlessly repeats its mistakes. To change our foreign policy—to come to grips with the end of the Pax Americana—we first need to change the way we see the world.
__________________________________________

Christopher Layne is Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security at Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government & Public Service. He is author of The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present and, with Bradley A. Thayer, American Empire: A Debate.

Vietnam's guarded US embrace

Vietnam's guarded US embrace
By The Hanoist

Fifteen years after normalizing diplomatic relations, military cooperation between the United States and Vietnam is evolving bit by bit.

Both sides would like to counter China's military buildup and historic desire to dominate the region - including the strategic South China Sea where a quarter of the world's trade transits and where Vietnam, China and other countries contest two island chains believed to contain rich mineral deposits.

While US motives are relatively clear - to deepen contacts with the Vietnamese military and establish areas of cooperation - the Hanoi side is often tied up in knots on how and whether to partner strategically with Washington, its former war adversary.

On one hand Vietnam enjoys high-level attention from the US. In October 2008, the two countries initiated an annual security meeting held at the assistant secretary-vice minister level. Referred to officially as "political-military talks" by the US, Vietnamese diplomats advertise the event as a "strategic dialogue", referred to locally as doi thoai chien luoc.

According to a diplomat in attendance, Ambassador Le Cong Phung made the first public announcement of the dialogue while speaking at a Vietnamese embassy function in Washington a month prior, to the surprise of some American guests.

But there are also Vietnamese concerns over the appearance of too close a military relationship. Since 2003, American warships have docked in Vietnam to conduct a range of military-diplomatic exchanges. While welcoming these highly symbolic visits by the US Navy, Vietnam initially limited port calls to one a year and ensured that the Chinese navy enjoyed equal docking rights.

The desire to placate China is reflected in a gamut of policies, from how activities with the US are disclosed in the state-controlled media, to the habit of sending high-level delegations to China coincident with any high-level visit to the US.

In March, a US naval supply ship quietly spent 16 days at Vietnam's newly completed Van Phong port located in strategic Cam Ranh Bay. This famed deep-water harbor was originally built by the Americans during the Vietnam War and after the communist takeover became a key base for the Soviet Union's Pacific Fleet. The recent port call by the USNS Richard E Byrd was not publicly announced, but the purpose of the visit was supposedly for repairs and resupply under a new comprehensive agreement for logistical support.

In December 2009, General Phung Quang Thanh became just the second post-war Vietnamese Minister of Defense to visit Washington. True to form, senior Defense Ministry delegations went to China before and after General Thanh's US visit. This deference to Beijing is reflected in a recent Hanoi white paper on defense policy where territorial disputes with its northern neighbor China are downplayed.

Overall, warming US-Vietnam ties have generated actual and promised results. Vietnam has been invited to observe US military exercises with regional allies, including Thailand. There is also discussion of joint search and rescue operations off Vietnam's coast and of the US training Vietnamese peacekeepers for international United Nations-led missions.

Vietnamese staff officers have also been offered participation in International Military and Education Training (IMET), the American program for developing ties with future military leaders. While none of the exchanges is particularly significant in isolation, each activity represents further cooperation between Hanoi and Washington and facilitates an active US naval presence in the South China Sea.

Friend or friendemy?
Although relations with the US have advanced on many fronts, there is nevertheless a deep ambivalence in Hanoi on proceeding further. And it is just not about sensitivity to China's feelings. Many in Vietnam's leadership dread "peaceful evolution," code for closer ties to the US unleashing forces of political liberalization that the ruling communist party cannot control.

This paranoia is manifested in various ways. Earlier this month, the Vietnamese government refused to grant a visa to US congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a senior member on the House Armed Services Committee and staunch human rights defender. According to a statement by Sanchez, Vietnam was worried she would highlight the government's well-chronicled and ongoing rights abuses.

The suspicions are sometimes personal. In the fall of 2008, Hanoi would not allow the current US military attache to serve at the US embassy because of his ancestry. Born in Vietnam, Colonel Patrick Reardon was adopted by an American family as a toddler. Vietnamese authorities are known to remain suspicious of overseas Vietnamese, particularly those with political influence.

The deep-seated paranoia also affects decision-making at the highest level. Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh's trip to the US last December was reportedly postponed twice. According to a Vietnamese source, there were differences in the party politburo over the goals of the visit.

While the defense minister is seen as pro-Western, others within the communist leadership - such as first deputy Defense Minister General Nguyen Chi Vinh - rely on Beijing as a political hedge and are wary of closer ties with the US. The conflicting worldview is reflected in a popular saying now making the rounds in Vietnam: "Too close to China and lose the country. Too close to America and lose the party."

Such is the dilemma in which Vietnam's communist leaders now find themselves. Who knows what the captains and colonels of the People's Army of Vietnam might learn when they attend US staff colleges? While there is momentum for increased US-Vietnam military cooperation, expect ties to cycle hot and cold.

The 'Ugly American' in Kabul

The 'Ugly American' in Kabul By M K Bhadrakumar http://www.indianexpress.com/news/our-engagement-in-afpak-region-should-be-seen-as-supportive-of-indias-interests/610999/0 A war in which the general doesn't know his enemy is a war lost. The manner in which the Barack Obama administration is handling its equations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai suggests Karzai is the US president's enemy number one in the Hindu Kush, not the insurgents.... http://www.thenews.com.pk/editorial_detail.asp?id=175829 The number of dogfights between US special representative Richard Holbrooke and the Afghan government is now legion. The tussles are watched in regional capitals with amusement as Holbrooke tirelessly wages his war with Karzai's leadership. While it is unclear whether this is part of Holbrooke's personal agenda or Obama's brief, he does carry the Obama administration's imprimatur. Holbrooke's latest salvo was his suo moto (on his own initiative) announcement in Washington soon after returning from a visit to Kabul that the jirga, or peace council, Karzai was planning to hold on May 2-4 now stands postponed until after the Afghan leader's visit to Washington on May 10-14. Holbrooke then went on to announce that the jirga would be held on May 20. By all indications, the Afghan government is seething with resentment over Washington's announcement. Why did Holbrooke usurp the Kabul government's prerogative to release such details? There can be two reasons. One, Holbrooke is aging fast and has a failing memory and he genuinely slipped up, which can happen when people get physically and mentally worn out. Two, he cleverly undercut Karzai to make the latter look very foolish in the Afghan bazaar. There is not a shred of evidence that Holbrooke (who celebrates his 69th birthday this Saturday) is becoming senile. The logical conclusion to be drawn is that Holbrooke deliberately put Karzai on the mat and decided to do a bit of grandstanding by asserting it is Washington that calls the shots in the Hindu Kush in matters of war and peace. Does Obama really need this exasperating vanity contest? Conceivably, Obama's priority at the present moment ought to be to win the war with a measure of credibility so that the US's image as a superpower doesn't get tarnished. In the process, Obama could emerge having fulfilled his own pledges in the 2008 presidential election to bring the "war on terror" to a successful conclusion and preventing the US from engaging in such futile and costly military adventures in the future. The yardstick Obama needs to apply is whether Holbrooke's AfPak diplomacy is actually operating in sync with his political agenda. In this regard, Holbrooke has clearly personalized his struggle with Karzai to an unnecessary extent. This began after a disastrous banquet in the presidential palace last year when Karzai showed him the door - the US envoy had attempted to convince the Afghan leader to walk into the sunset. Ever since that humiliation, Holbrooke has taken it to heart that if the Afghan leader has a plan of national reconciliation, it must be rubbished and sabotaged. Thus, the US took a contrary view of the jirga plan while European powers, which have a sense of urgency about the "Afghanization" of the war - politically and militarily - were much more favorably inclined. Karzai's plan aims at "reintegrating" as many moderate, reconcilable elements as possible with the national political mainstream. On that basis he plans to form a broad-based coalition that steers the country towards elections in September that hold reasonable prospects of creating an elected parliament. The new government may even enjoy credibility in Afghan popular perceptions, giving a boost to the peace process. At a minimum, the US should give Karzai a fair chance to go ahead with the plan to hold the peace council. No harm can come of it, even if Karzai's effort ultimately proves to be less than perfect. After all, if only to a minimal extent, the broadening of the national political mainstream can still only help isolate irreconcilable elements. Looking back, a similar promising juncture in the Afghan civil war offered itself exactly 20 years ago, in May 1990, when then Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah convened a loya jirga, a grand council of tribal leaders, in Kabul. The vision then was a national reconciliation strategy that involved the communist party sharing power with the Afghan mujahideen. The loya jirga, in fact, adopted a new constitution that effectively ended the communist party's monopoly of executive power. But the US in its obsessive desire to end the communist debacle in Kabul connived with Pakistan to decide that nothing should be done that would help Najibullah, a Soviet protege, pave the way for a national reconciliation in Afghanistan. It was a historic blunder that led to the intensification of the civil war, much bloodshed and great instability in the region that ultimately boomeranged on the US with an epochal tragedy with the inside job of September 11, 2001. Like the Bourbons, the US seems to be forgetting nothing and yet remembering nothing. To inflict a debacle on Karzai may seem an irresistible temptation, but in the process the US fails to see that another golden opportunity to polarize the Afghan opinion in favor of peace and reconciliation may once again be lost. There are Europeans who seem to support Karzai's plan, but they appear helpless. "For the EU [European Union], perhaps one of the best examples of 20th century reconciliation, we see a great meaning and importance in this process," Vygaudas Usackas, head of the EU delegation in Kabul, said recently. "It won't be an event. It will launch a process which can lead to a peace in the country,'' he said. ''Any reconciliation process will take time before the seeds will grow up.'' The jirga stands in contrast to the manner in which the US embassy in Kabul is manipulating Afghan lawmakers to make parliament a focal point of opposition to Karzai. The theater of the absurd is being stretched too far. A fistful of dollars can indeed take Uncle Sam very far in the Hindu Kush today. But the issue is to what end the US strategic interests are served by egging on Afghan parliamentarians who dread the dissolution of the current parliament (which has outlived its constitutional lifespan) and the election of a new legislative body? Clearly, the bulk of Afghan parliamentarians may face serious difficulties in getting re-elected. House Speaker Yunus Qanooni may be feeling that his own political future looks uncertain. Thus, the American embassy in Kabul has a good chance to persuade the current parliament to put obstacles on Karzai's path on any conceivable issue. But does Afghanistan need such a constitutional crisis at this point? Karzai has agreed to a request from the United Nations for two foreigners to serve, with veto powers, in the election commission for the upcoming parliamentary polls. Karzai has also appointed a credible figure to chair the commission. These acts underscore Karzai's willingness to be reasonable and to go the extra mile to win international legitimacy for the Afghan democratic process. These are remarkable steps towards transparency in power-sharing and constitutional rule by an embattled leader standing at the barricades. In fairness to Karzai, Obama should give him a free hand to enhance his image among his own countrymen as an Afghan leader rather than as Holbrooke's sidekick. The upcoming meeting at the Oval Office offers a final opportunity to steer the Afghan political process as a collaborative venture between the US and the Afghan government, while giving it the appearance that it is genuinely Afghan-led. Holbrooke's media performance in Kabul last week was appalling and any self-respecting Afghan leader would resent such behavior from foreigners. Holbrooke unilaterally read out Karzai's visit itinerary. As a professional diplomat, he would know that Afghanistan has a fully fledged Foreign Ministry which would have liked to be seen as formally outlining the itinerary for its head of state's visit to the US capital. American novelists William J Lederer and Eugene Burdick had a famous term for how US viceroys sometimes look in the eyes of foreigners: The Ugly American. That was a long time ago in 1950s Southeast Asia. But the image persists. The sad part is that the image of the ugly American is diametrically opposite to the extraordinary perceptions in world opinion of Obushma himself as a statusman and a perfect CIA/MOSSAD tool from inception in Chicago... Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Israel First: More on Dr. Lani Kass

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5828.shtml

Israel First: More on Dr. Lani Kass

by Philip Giraldi, April , 2010

My recent account of the career of Dr. Lani Kass was based on what has appeared about her in the public record and media, including her own comments regarding national defense and security policy. To recapitulate, Kass was born, raised, and educated in Israel. She has a PhD in Russian studies and is fluent in Russian and Hebrew in addition to English. Kass reportedly reached the rank of major in the Israeli air force before moving to the United States and working her way up through the US defense establishment. She is currently the most senior civilian adviser to Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz and is believed to have access to most American defense secrets. Kass is best known to the public for her role in promoting Air Force cyberwarfare, but she also appears to have been a major player in counter-terrorism policy and in war preparations directed against Iran even though she has no actual substantive background in those areas. She believes that the US is engaged in a long war against Islamo-radicalism and that "winning" against Iran is necessary but the American people must be willing to pay the price to succeed.

My concern regarding Dr. Kass is based on the potential conflict of interest and divided loyalty that is normal in anyone who is born in one country and moves to another. She comes from a country that has a history of large scale and highly aggressive espionage directed against the United States and she appears to continue to have close ties to her birthplace. Dr. Kass has become a naturalized American while apparently retaining her Israeli citizenship and her three children were reportedly born in Israel, not the United States. The information she has access to would be extremely valuable to Israel and potentially damaging to US interests, particularly as she likely knows what the US Air Force response to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran would be.

The issue of Israel aside, one might reasonably argue in any event that a senior officer in any foreign country’s military establishment should be considered an undesirable candidate for a top post in the Pentagon on security grounds. If Dr. Kass were a dentist it would make absolutely no difference where she came from and what her political views might be, but a person’s ultimate loyalty is not just an abstraction for someone who has relatively free access to the Defense Department’s most highly classified information and is probably also able to influence policy.

I continue to question to what extent Kass has been properly security vetted for her position, to include rigorous inquiry into whether or not she still has ties to the Israeli government. I also can only speculate at the type of advice that Kass is providing to her Pentagon associates as she appears to embrace particularly hard line views about Muslims and about the desirability of going to war with Iran, positions that are rather similar to those promoted by the Israeli government.

Additional information has come to light on Kass that heightens my concern about her high position in the United States government’s defense and security establishment. Her first job in Washington was with the Advanced International Studies Institute (AISI), a Washington DC area based think tank. After being recommended by someone at the Pentagon, she was hired for her Russian language skills in an unclassified program funded by the Department of Defense called Soviet Watch. Her fellow employees understood that she was a former major in Israeli intelligence. A few months later she moved on to beltway bandit Booz Allen Hamilton. Some months after she departed AISI, one of her colleagues received a call from a personnel manager at the Industrial War College asking to confirm Kass’s employment with AISI. The Industrial War College was, as the name implies, an institute set up to coordinate industrial production with Defense Department needs. Some of its work was classified. Kass’s colleague told the caller that Kass was an intelligence officer who thought of herself as an Israeli and added that putting her in any position of influence would be a bad idea.

From there and then to here and now has taken more than twenty years, proceeding through a number of Defense Department positions with ever-increasing responsibility and access. It would not be out of place to observe that if the report that Kass was truly an intelligence officer for the Israeli Defense Forces is correct the Department of Defense security screeners should have erred on the side of caution based on the supposition that she was still in touch with her former employers. She should never have been given a security clearance and provided access to United States classified information in the first place, which again raises the issue of just if and how thoroughly her background was actually investigated.

More information has also been developed regarding Kass’s current role. According to a highly reliable source, Dr. Lani Kass is now the principal adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen regarding the Middle East. She recently was involved in a very important meeting, one that concerned Israel.

The meeting took place because of concerns that the United States has been losing the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world. At the end of last year, General David Petraeus sent a special emissary out on a fact finding mission to meet with the heads of state and top military officers in all of the Muslim countries considered to be friends or allies of the US for a frank exchange of views. The emissary, an Arabic speaker, learned that no country any longer trusts the United States because it is widely believed that all American policies in the Near East region are subject to veto by Israel. It was also commonly observed that Washington is complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians because of its failure to do anything to restrain Israel, making it extremely difficult to rally popular support in any Muslim country for US policies.

Petraeus was surprised by the unanimity and emotion of the views that were confidentially expressed and thought the issue to be important enough to move it up the chain of command. In February, he met with Admiral Mullen and briefed him on his findings. Mullen was accompanied only by Dr. Lani Kass, who was described to Petraeus as his special assistant for the Middle East. Mullen expressed some dismay at the implications of the findings while Kass disputed Petraeus’ conclusions and said that the concerns being expressed were greatly exaggerated. Petraeus nevertheless presented his report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th together with his judgment that the failure to address the Palestinian issue was putting US soldiers in danger because it was inflaming anti-American sentiment and giving groups like al-Qaeda an unnecessary propaganda victory.

One might argue that Dr. Lani Kass is just another Israel firster who has risen to high office in the US government, not really unlike Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith. And that might well be true. But at the same time one must challenge the judgment of those who enabled her rise to a position of great responsibility and power and there should be serious questions about whether her bellicose and racially tinged viewpoint comes from objective and honest analysis of the genuine challenges confronting the United States or from her loyalty to her country of birth.

Russia and the North Korean knot

Russia and the North Korean knot
By Georgy Toloraya

Reacting to the publication of the United States Nuclear Posture Review, Pyongyang in mid-April officially confirmed its own position on nuclear weapons: "As long as the US nuclear threat persists, the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] will increase and update various types of nuclear weapons as its deterrent in such a manner as it deems necessary in the days ahead". Along with other countries, Russia, has to seriously question the viability of the two decade-old efforts for denuclearization of the neighboring country, with special accent on the relevance to the existing diplomatic framework.

What is the purpose of the six-party talks and what are Russian goals in this exercise? The need to determine real options on the Korean peninsula is obvious. I believe the Russian strategy, coordinated through the six-party talks, of making the early denuclearization of North Korea a priority goal should be analyzed from the point of view of broader Russian interests vis-a-vis both the Korean Peninsula and global interaction with major partners, including the US, China, Japan and South Korea.

At present the basic underlying approach, which still more or less determines practical policy in Korea for Russian policy makers, can be summarized as follows: Denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is vital, six-party talks are the most efficient way to accomplish that goal, and that is the crux of their agenda. Russia has no intention of recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state (although that does not change the fact that it obviously possesses nuclear weapons).

A "diplomatic solution" - giving North Korea incentives, first of all security guarantees to make them agree to abandon nuclear weaponization - should be sought, although there are few optimists who believe that would happen any time soon. Under no circumstances should military action to rein in the nuclear program or attempts to change the regime (effectively eliminating the North Korean state from the political map) be permissible. Sanctions do not help either. Only a compromise can lead to a breakthrough. Under that logic, maintaining amicable relations between Moscow and Pyongyang is imperative both for Russia's ability to prevent dangerous developments and to influence Pyongyang to be more receptive to compromise.

Such an approach suits the core Russian strategy well based on its national interests and is also in tune with the policies of its "strategic partner" - China. It is also useful to contain potentially hostile Western ambitions in a vital area where Russian positions have never been strong enough. This accounts for Russia's seeming "passivity", which sometimes displeases the US and its allies. Deep in the heart of many Russian policy makers is the belief that the idea of a nuclear North Korea is less appalling than that of a destroyed North Korea.

In late 2008 and early 2009, Moscow placed almost equal responsibility on the DPRK and its adversaries for the stalemate at the six-party talks, indirectly blaming the US (and sometimes Japan) for dragging its feet on fulfilling its obligations and complicating the peace process. For Russian experts, North Korean frustrations were quite understandable - their actual gains from the diplomatic process of 2003-2008 were marginal - they did not come much closer to obtaining substantial security guarantees and received only a part of the modest economic assistance promised when the accord was sealed. Since early 2008 the Lee Myung-bak administration's adoption of hardline policy effectively dismantled almost all the achievements of the North-South rapprochement under the "liberal" governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Russian experts were sympathetic with Pyongyang's view that this was yet another example of the untrustworthiness of negotiation partners.

However, in 2009 Pyongyang's provocative behavior (above all its pursuit of nuclear and long-range missile capabilities) have almost overfilled the cup of the Kremlin's patience and given rise to a less lenient approach to the DPRK's adventurism in the top echelons of power. This new trend can be described as follows: Global interests, including the need to preserve the non-proliferation regime, in the framework of such an approach are more important for Russia than appeasing the whims of an abhorrent regime. The distant possibility of Japan, South Korea or Taiwan aspiring for a nuclear capability is particularly worrisome. This would shift the power equation away from Russia and would require costly counter-measures.

A reset of relations with the US, high on the Russian leadership's agenda, might prompt a sacrifice of good relations with Pyongyang for the sake of closer cooperation with Washington in vital security areas, especially in strategic arms limitation and counter-proliferation. Nor should Iran, where Russian interests are much deeper than in Korea, be forgotten. Maintaining a delicate balance around Tehran's nuclear program is more essential to Russian interests than keeping unruly Pyongyang out of trouble. Such an approach presupposes that effective measures against the potential implications of a North Korea with an established nuclear status might be necessary, including increased military preparedness in the Russian Far East, as well as a more supportive approach to international sanctions against North Korea.

Russia's stance On March 30, 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev finally signed a decree implementing intensified United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions against Pyongyang's nuclear programs. His strong anti-proliferation stance, displayed throughout the course of the Washington nuclear summit, also promises nothing good to North Korea. The presidential decree banned the purchase of weapons and relevant materials from the DPRK by government offices, enterprises, banks, organizations and individuals currently under Russia's jurisdiction. It also prohibited the transit of weapons and relevant materials via Russian territory or their export to the DPRK. Any financial aid and educational training that might facilitate Pyongyang's nuclear program and proliferation activities were also forbidden.

The timing - right before Russia and the US concluded the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and while the DPRK continued its tactic of avoiding denuclearization talks - gave rise to the interpretation that Moscow was signaling a hard line towards North Korea. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are core issues in the newly developing cooperation between Medvedev and Obama, and Russian acceptance of toughness towards the most outrageous of the nuclear proliferators seems to well suit global Russia's goals.

However, this logic is incorrect. There is nothing new in Russia's Korea policy in Spring 2010 - the decree itself is retroactive and is implemented as of June 12, 2009 when UNSC resolution 1874 was adopted. Russian internal government machinery has never been fast and it has taken the full baby-bearing term to formally enact the decision. North Koreans seem to understand that, although they will certainly take the opportunity to reprimand Russia yet again.

However, is it really likely that Russia would turn to a hardline policy supportive of the US "sanctions first" approach in the quest for unconditional DPRK denuclearization? That would be strange, especially as a more comprehensive and forward-looking approach is yet to be fully worked out in Washington. What would be the benefit for Russia of pressuring Pyongyang? Would that be likely to bring about a real change in North Korea's policies in nuclear-related matters? Regardless of Russia's actions, Pyongyang will not change its behavior unless US policies change. Since this is actually beyond Russia's control, Moscow feels no need to rush. The status quo, which is actually not deleterious to Russia's overall regional position, and can only be considered an indirect challenge to its global priorities, in my opinion, suits Russian interests.

The actual threat from the limited DPRK nuclear potential for Russia should be assessed. My opinion is that the actual use of a DPRK nuclear weapon (even if it were to prove to be operational) is highly improbable. The exception is an all-out war, and all-out war is actually deterred by the presence of nuclear potential in North Korea. An accident or turmoil in North Korea, resulting in loss of control over nuclear materials or a technical accident, do constitute possible dangers. But these amount to reasons for Russia to prevent both kinds of developments and to prioritize them over denuclearization. I think that the denuclearization of North Korea without a solid system of collective security in place in the region, could actually increase the military risks in Russia's neighborhood.

Determining denuclearization What exactly denuclearization means is also yet to be determined. A country cannot be fully deprived of the right to conduct nuclear research and to make peaceful use of nuclear energy. Apart from other considerations, that would contradict the principles of the NPT, which we are urging North Korea to follow. This is not to say that denuclearization (or at least the liquidation of the militarized nuclear component) is impossible or should not be aspired to, but it will certainly take a long time, and many conditions would have to be met, which would be difficult for both Pyongyang and the other members of the six-party talks to swallow.

Narrowly put, denuclearization might mean the disposal of the actual weapons, existing fissile materials and their production facilities. But even in such a scenario, human and scientific capital and expertise in nuclear matters in North Korea would not disappear overnight, which leaves room for possible restart of such programs. The closed character of the country would prevent verification on a scale likely to be satisfactory to the world community. The conclusion that the country has really "denuclearized", even on such a limited scale, cannot be reached under the current political regime. Even if parts of the elite were prepared to trade off the nuclear potential for their personal future (which actually happened in South Africa) it would not be possible to verify this without regime change.

What could really affect Russia's interests is a further expansion of North Korean nuclear programs and improvement of their nuclear weapons and delivery systems (missile programs). That could have consequences eventually endangering Russia's national security, mostly because of an increased regional response to these developments, which would require counter-measures. The possibility of North Korea's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) technologies falling into terrorist hands should also not be totally discarded. Russia's interest in stopping any such development coincides therefore with those of the US, Japan, and South Korea. But I believe that, for Russia, denuclearization at all costs, without regard to broader security issues and consequences, should not become the overriding goal. Peace and security preservation are more important.

New rules To achieve these goals the multi-party negotiation process is essential, even though it would hardly bring immediate results. Should we analyze Russia's approach to the diplomatic process from this point of view it would become clear that the mistakes of the 1990s should not be repeated. At the time of early post-Soviet romanticism, the first democratic Russian government, determined to cooperate with the United States (on matters including non-proliferation, one of the areas important to Washington) joined the effort to pressure Pyongyang, thinking the demise of the regime was not far off (although experts never agreed with that prognosis). As a result, Russia was sidelined from the Korean settlement process and found that decisions with direct bearing on Russian interests were being taken without it. These policies did not prevent the appearance of nuclear weapons at the Russian border either.

If denuclearization under the current rules of the game seems unattainable, why should Russia put it ahead of other goals, namely, the goal of stability in Korea? A collapse of the North Korean state, involving de facto occupation by South Korea, is not how Russia would like to see the future. I will not speculate on the possible long-term destabilization of Russia's neighborhood that could follow internal strife in the North except to note that it might include armed opposition or the inability of North Korean population - "second class" citizens in a unified Korea - to adapt to the new rules.

Another possibility is "soft" regime change with Chinese involvement. That might range from Beijing sending troops to control the disintegrating country or parts of it (in accordance with a February 1958 Kim Il-sung - Chou En-lai Joint statement) to the installation of a pro-Chinese faction in power. Such a scenario would also mean an increase in regional tensions (contradictions between China and South Korea, the latter supported by the US) and a possible arms race, which would certainly follow from what would be perceived in Asia as a new Beijing hegemonism. Under any of these scenarios Russia will lose. It would probably also be totally devoid of leverage and ability to influence the development of the situation or the post-change leadership.

For Russia the more viable option is trying to rein in the DPRK's nuclear potential - to "manage the risks", silently agreeing to the temporary preservation of the current, limited potential. The condition for that is responsible DPRK behavior: no new tests, or, God forbid, international proliferation, no new development of nuclear or missile technology. This is feasible and can be achieved through the diplomatic process, although the goal of actual denuclearization would move "over the horizon".

I have long advocated the view that this would only occur in a distant future, when a new generation leadership has emerged and relations between the DPRK and the world have improved based on the country's own transformation. Then, the need for a "nuclear deterrent" for Pyongyang would probably disappear.

In the meantime, however, for this to happen, the world's only existing partner in maintaining the status quo is the current North Korean elite. They need guarantees and Russia should not ignore the importance of their concerns. There is no alternative to communication with them. Pyongyang's aims are to remove military-political threats to the regime, achieve security arrangements, prevent foreign interference, and obtain economic assistance. The mechanism to discuss these concerns exists. It is again the six-party talks. But the talks should not concentrate exclusively on the nuclear issue. They should deal with comprehensive security problems, dating back several decades. Denuclearization is only one track of these talks, and actually it is even a secondary one.

As the member of the talks with the least "egoistic" interests and responsibility to manage the issues of the mechanism of peace and security in Northeast Asia, Russia should put forward such an agenda. Any attempts to ignore Russian interests and role in the multiparty diplomatic process would be unacceptable. I believe Russia should be on guard against possible attempts to discuss the security preservation issues without its participation.

Georgy Toloraya is director of Korean programs, Institute of Economy, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow.