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The emerging Asian order
ON September 24, 2005, political Asia was rearranged. This happened at the meeting of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. On that day India, for the first time in 50 years, abandoned its non-aligned partners to vote in favour of Washington while Pakistan defied intense American pressure and voted in favour of a country in its region and one from which it had become somewhat distant in recent years.
China and Russia took a stance independent of the United States, thus clearly signalling that they had no intention of following Washington if their own strategic interests were not being served. Japan once again sided firmly with the United States. What was the issue that brought about these changes in position?
On that date, the IAEA board passed a resolution saying that Iran had violated its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by secretly developing a nuclear programme. However, following intense lobbying by Tehran, the agency delayed reporting the matter to the UN Security Council, as was hoped by Washington. This outcome reflected a rare display of disunity on the 35-member board of the agency which has a tradition of passing resolutions unanimously.
Just 22 member countries voted in favour of the resolution. They included the United States, Japan, all European Union members of the board and, surprisingly, India. Twelve countries, including Brazil, China, Pakistan and South Africa abstained. Venezuela was the only country that opposed the resolution.
There are moments in world events that seem momentous only after they have occurred, sometimes little noticed even by those most affected by them. The meeting in Vienna may just prove to be such an event. This was the first occasion when a large and influential set of countries around the globe began to reflect on the emerging world political order and took note of their own interests.
The American invasion of Iraq, the continuing insurgency in that country, the resilience shown by Al-Qaeda and the stateless groups associated with it, the deepening global energy crisis, and the recognition that the United States had been weakened by these events to the extent that it was not able to protect its own people against natural disasters were all significant developments. Suddenly Washington seemed vulnerable, not able to shock and awe those who wished to go their own way even if it meant annoying the sole superpower.
The United States had worked hard to get the resolution adopted by the IAEA on the basis of consensus. It failed, in part because a number of large countries were reluctant to side with it, unhappy with the way it was conducting foreign affairs. While the diplomatic work was underway, there were indications that the United States had failed to get support from important Asian countries including China, Russia, India and Pakistan.
Frantic last minute bargaining between the US and the EU on the one side, and those who were reluctant to lend support to Washington and Brussels on the other, changed some positions. China and Russia agreed not to oppose the resolution but to abstain while India, much to the surprise of most observers, agreed to support it.
The Indian switch was the most surprising given its close relations with Tehran and its 50-year adherence to the principles of non-alignment. Russia, China and members of the 115-nation Non-Aligned Movement said during a closed-door meeting before the resolution was presented to the IAEA board that they opposed the original EU-3 draft backed by the United States to escalate pressure on Iran through a Security Council referral. That persuaded the Europeans to prepare a softer resolution that also came under fire.
A statement by the Malaysian ambassador at the IAEA on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement completely dismissed the EU’s arguments against Iran. Many countries in the movement were sympathetic to Iran’s claim that it was being subjected to “nuclear apartheid” by big powers that wanted to keep developing countries from acquiring nuclear technology. There was nothing in the NPT, a treaty signed by Iran that could prevent the country for doing what it said it was engaged in.
It was in this environment that India took the extraordinary decision to vote against the wishes of the Non-Aligned Movement and against Iran, a country with which it had worked hard to develop close economic and political relations. It had signed a 20-year $20 billion deal with Iran for the continuous supply of oil and gas at favourable prices.
However, New Delhi decided that the recently concluded agreement with the United States that allowed it almost unconstrained access to American nuclear technology was much more precious than the agreement with Tehran. The understanding on this issue with the United States executive branch required ratification by the US Congress and that was not assured. Several members of Congress, in particular those close to Israel, had said openly that they would oppose the nuclear agreement with India if New Delhi did not support Washington in its dispute with Tehran. For these Congressmen a nuclear-armed Tehran posed a serious threat to Israel.
Why did the confrontation with Tehran that had been building for a long time mature into such a historic event? Why did a number of important global and regional powers choose to follow a line independent from the one being pursued by the West? In the first few days of August, Iran took a number of steps that were viewed by the West as an indication that the regime in the country had taken the decision to defy the attempts to keep it from acquiring nuclear fuel technology.
Iran maintains that it needs to acquire that technology in order to generate electricity. The United States believes that the real purpose behind these moves is to acquire nuclear weapons that would make it possible for Tehran to challenge Washington in an area the latter considers of great strategic interest for itself.
Let us first look at the various interests involved in the issue. The Americans are troubled by the thought that a country run by the people they regard as Islamic extremists will acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has been a thorn in Washington’s side since the revolution that brought the Islamic radicals to power in 1979. The United States then lost not only a regime that was its closest ally in the region.
It also brought into power a group of people who were not prepared to accept the presence of the Jewish state in the heart of Islamic lands. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States, Tehran refused to commit itself to the American war against terrorism.
Washington believes that some of the senior members of the Taliban regime slipped into Iran after the American attack on Afghanistan. The US was not shy to declare that a change in the regime in Tehran was its ultimate objective since Iran was a part of the “axis of evil” that had to be dealt with. But for the difficulties in Iraq, Washington would have been considerably more assertive towards Tehran. Having been marooned in Iraq, it was prepared to leave negotiations with Tehran in the hands of the large European powers. It provided guidance to the E3 from behind the scenes.
The Europeans were less hostile towards Tehran. They saw tremendous economic opportunities in Iran, especially since US laws barred American companies from doing business in that country. They were also interested in maintaining close relations with the country that had one of the largest reserves of oil and gas. Besides, over time, the Europeans had developed the approach that all difficult problems between nations had to be resolved through diplomacy rather than the use of force. As one analyst had famously observed, Europeans were from Venus and Americans from Mars.
In their on-and-off negotiations with Tehran, the E3 made offers that included trade incentives and security guarantees including the pledge that the United States would not seek regime change in Iran. The deal would have also recognized Iran’s role in regional security with Iraq and Afghanistan, both acknowledged as countries in which it had legitimate interest. In return, Tehran was to abstain indefinitely from enriching uranium or separating plutonium as a prelude to creating a nuclear fuel cycle.
The Russians have interests of their own. Iran sat on the other side of the large geographic expanse of vital interest to Moscow. A less vigilant Russia could see its influence over Central Asia replaced by other countries, not just the United States but also Iran. Moscow was not particularly appreciative of the military presence acquired by the United States in Central Asia in preparation for the 2001 attack on Afghanistan. The Central Asians with large and restive Muslim populations could align themselves closely with Tehran if Moscow followed an approach that alienated them.
Iran, using its oil and gas resources and its expertise in these sectors could build close economic relations with these countries and offer the landlocked nations of Central Asia access to the sea to transport their oil and gas to the major centres of consumption. The Russian interest in Central Asia are considerably different from those of the United States and major European nations. The Russians also have strong economic interests in Iran. They are helping the country build a $1 billion nuclear reactor, the type of machine for which Tehran said it needed to develop its own supply of fuel.
The Chinese have their own concerns. For them continued economic growth in their country has the highest priority. They are of the view that with rapidly rising incomes and increased employment they will be able to contain the pressures for greater political freedom at home. Convinced that it is only within a tightly controlled political system they can obtain rapid growth, they have no intention of following the Russian and East European model of a sudden move towards democracy.
However, as the world energy market has tightened in recent months, it is important for Beijing to secure access to sources of energy. This is one of the several reasons why they are reluctant to vote against Iran in the latter’s conflict with the United States.
The immediate issue before the Vienna based agency was the decision by Iran to break the seals at uranium plant in Isfahan where, among others, it had promised to suspend its reprocessing activity while negotiations with the E3 — Britain, France, and Germany — were going on. If it continued with its programme as it indicated it would in the statement by the country’s president at the United Nations on September 17, and starts to convert uranium yellowcake into UF-4 gas, that would be another stage towards the development of a nuclear bomb.
The votes in Vienna rearranged Asia into two blocs, one closely tied with the United States and the other that was made up of the countries that wished to follow their own strategic interests. The first bloc included Japan and India, the second China, Russia and Pakistan. What are the implications of this development? That is a question for next week.
How not to win the war on terror
IRAQI and coalition forces tracked down and killed Abu Azzam, the second-most-wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq. He was one of Zarqawi’s top lieutenants. He was reported to be “the top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad.”
Those who heard President Bush make this claim in the Rose Garden on Wednesday could be forgiven for feeling that they were suffering from a case of deja vu.
It was just over two months ago that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers announced the capture of Abu Abd Aziz, whom he described as Abu Musab Zarqawi’s “main leader in Baghdad.” And it was only three months ago that Pentagon officials announced the arrest of Mohammed Khalif Shaiker, a.k.a. Abu Talha, of Mosul, which they described as “a major defeat for the Al Qaeda organization in Iraq.”
In May, Amar Zubaydi, a Zarqawi lieutenant responsible for an assault on Abu Ghraib prison and a series of car bombings in Baghdad, was arrested. In January, Abu Umar Kurdi, who was said to be the architect of three-quarters of the car bombings in Baghdad, was captured.
A very quick LexisNexis search shows that at least a dozen top Zarqawi lieutenants have been apprehended or killed since early last year. The “Groundhog Day” quality of this routine might not matter if our opponents’ litany of accomplishments during the exact same period were not so awful.
Consider these facts:
In light of all this bad news, it is not particularly surprising that Washington would showcase each capture and kill as a sign of progress. Senior officials have used the same approach in discussing the broader war on terror in the past and, between early 2003 and the final stages of the presidential campaign in 2004, Bush and others claimed that the number of top Al Qaeda operatives who had been taken out of action rose from one-third of the most wanted to three-quarters.
These numbers cannot be confirmed, and counterterrorism experts in various agencies refer to the three-quarters figure as a “White House number” that they had nothing to do with.
But more important — as bombings in Madrid, London and Sharm el Sheik, and a broad consensus among counterterrorism experts, indicate — these figures cannot be interpreted as a reduction in the terrorist threat.
The same is true in Iraq. When the US military invaded Iraq, the message was sent loud and clear that, in the words of Gen. Tommy Franks, “we don’t do body counts.” But the frequent announcements of captures and kills have become the contemporary equivalent of the body count — an illusion of progress that, like the daily numbers served to the nation during the Vietnam War, distracts from indicators that genuinely count: the level of violence, the continuing flow of recruits into our opponents’ camp and the amount of territory in which relative peace has been established.
It seems evident that to defeat the insurgency in Iraq — and the global jihadist challenge — the United States must have a story of its own to counter the one told by opponents, who argue that we are an occupier with designs to steal the country’s wealth and suppress its faith. Despite the increasingly frequent avowals from Bush and his aides that we are fighting, in his words, a “hateful ideology,” the sad fact is that the United States still has not provided that opposing narrative.
Indeed, it is still fighting against individual men and measuring progress accordingly. By doing so, it continues to foster the notion that our opponents are finite in number and destructible and that, on a good day, we will wipe them out.
Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that we do not have a story to counter the insurgents’ narrative, which, however benign our intentions, appears to many to be supported by facts on the ground. “Our strategy is clear in Iraq,” the president remarked on Wednesday. “We are hunting down high-value targets like Azzam and Zarqawi.”
A true strategy, however, would apply the full range of our diplomatic capabilities to win allies among moderates in the Muslim world and lead non-Muslim countries to resolve the disputes — in Kashmir, Indonesia, Chechnya, Palestine and Thailand to name the most famous — that fuel militancy. It would put our financial might to work with assistance on a scale that would make it far more difficult for regimes to evade real political and economic reform.
Such a course would be based on an understanding that public diplomacy — adorning current policies with the window dressing of listening tours, such as the one Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes was on — will not change any of the fundamental dynamics underlying terrorism today. It may be too late to do this in Iraq, but as the jihad widens, the urgency of a strategic approach only grows. —Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service
America’s nuclear threat
PRESIDENT Bush’s doctrine of pre-emption, enunciated in September 2002, was a departure from the long-standing policy that had been followed by his predecessors to prevent wars.
However, the doctrine of joint nuclear operations, pronounced by Washington on March 15 this year, involving the US nuclear forces in the national security strategy, signals a radical change as it stipulates the use of nuclear weapons in pre-emption strikes against the potential adversaries that could threaten the national security interests of the United States and its allies.
The doctrine in question seeks to deter the adversaries from undertaking actions intended to harm the interests of the United States and its allies by creating the fear of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against them by the US nuclear forces. In the aftermath of the September 11 tragic events the quest for absolute security by the United States is understandable.
However, the use of nuclear weapons by it to achieve this objective would be entirely out of proportion with any perceived threat to its national interests and be a reckless disregard for the UN Charter and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Some observers also believe that the US concern for its security is rather exaggerated and deliberately magnified to advance its global strategic interests. The US invasion of Iraq is a case in point.
One of the cardinal principles of the warfare is that the civilian population must not be made the object of an attack. Accordingly, warring states should never use weapons which do not distinguish between civilian and military targets, as is the case with the nuclear weapons.
Nuclear arms also do not recognize international borders and people living in countries hundreds of miles away from the designated target will also be affected. In the words of the prominent writer and analyst, Russell D. Hoffman, “A nuclear war is never anything less than a genocide”. It follows from this that the states do not have an unfettered freedom of choice of weapons they may use against their adversaries.
The dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was an inexcusable crime against humanity. The passage of time has not healed the wounds inflicted on the innocent people of these two cities. The nuclear doctrine pronounced recently by the United States, however, proves that it has no regrets over the sufferings inflicted by its forces on the people of the two Japanese cities and it would not hesitate to do the same again if the exigencies of its interests so demanded. This leads one to believe that, contrary to its pious declarations, the nuclear policy of the United States is based on expediency rather than principles.
Given its position as the world’s most dominant military power, the United States was expected to create a new vision of its nuclear arsenal putting behind the legacy of the Cold War era. Ironically, however, it has opted to use its nuclear weapons against its prospective adversaries. Clear evidence is available that it is also developing new generations of nuclear and other lethal weapons for this purpose. Washington has apparently overstepped the bounds of what is permissible to protect its perceived or real security interests, if they were indeed threatened.
In any case, it is clear that nuclear weapons will continue to play a crucial role in the security policy of the United States in the foreseeable future and other nuclear states emulating the US example would be equally determined to retain their nuclear arsenal and may also be encouraged to make nuclear pre-emptive strikes against their enemies to protect or promote their national interests.
It is also feared that there could also be an upsurge of interest among nations wanting to acquire nuclear weapons that would not only defeat the very purpose of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) but may even increase the prospects of a devastating nuclear war. The US nuclear doctrine is indeed fraught with serious implications.
The right of self-defence is recognized under the UN Charter. However, the US argument that it can exercise its right of anticipatory self-defence under the Charter is untenable. The UN Charter recognizes the exception of self-defence in an emergency, as a temporary measure, and is limited to actual armed attack on a country.
The Charter does not recognize the right of anticipatory self-defence, which was devoid of legal and moral force and also runs counter to the collective security system of the United Nations. For obvious reasons, no state can be allowed to act unilaterally against a perceived aggressor. The doctrine of pre-emption is certainly a usurpation of the UN Security Council’s role as a peace maker and, if not effectively checked, may severely undermine its role and validity.
It is regrettable that taking advantage of its unrivalled military power, the United States is determined to manage the global order consistent with its own national interests and also to assert its status as a unipolar power without opposition from any quarter, including the United Nations. It has no qualms about flouting the UN resolutions if it was in its national interest to do so.
For the same reason, it has always thwarted an attempt to debate the legality of the use of nuclear weapons. There is, however, no room for complacency if the world is to be made safe from the catastrophic effects of the use of nuclear weapons by the United States or any other state.
The international community should, therefore, unequivocally and unanimously denounce the US doctrine for joint nuclear operations and put pressure on Washington to rescind it immediately. The international community, at the same time, should also demand a total ban on the use of nuclear weapons pending the attainment of the goal of non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament, as stipulated by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The writer is a former ambassador.
I’m sorry
THE Bush administration took a 180-degree turn when the president announced he was responsible for things that went wrong in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina.
The new policy required a new department in the White House to get out the word. It was named It Was All My Fault (IWAMF). The chief was an old Bush crony from Texas, and the staff was made up of speechwriters from the White House.
The chief spoke: “In every speech, we have to include something that the president is sorry for.”
“It’s going to be hard, because for five years we’ve said he never made a mistake,” a writer said.
The chief said, “If he wants to change course, it’s our job to show he’s captain of the ship of state.”
“Can he say he’s responsible for the country’s largest debt in history?”
“That’s a good one. We can add that his biggest mistake was to demand tax cuts for the rich.”
Another writer said, “What about Iraq? He should say it was his fault that we went to war in Iraq when they didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.”
The chief said, “And we should add that, in his heart, he fooled himself into thinking that once he captured Saddam, the country would turn into Switzerland.”
“Let’s not forget his Social Security reforms, which were poorly thought out and would play havoc with the lives of senior citizens.”
“These are all good ideas, but will Karl Rove approve them?”
“Of course he will. It was his idea to have the buck stop in the Oval Office in the first place. He doesn’t want Bush to be the first president who never admitted making a mistake.”
“Should the president, as commander-in-chief, take blame for the Pentagon?”
“Yes. He can say he realized he made a mistake appointing Don Rumsfeld as secretary of defence after he found out Rummy went to Princeton, when he thought he’d gone to Yale.”
“Can he say anything about the other Cabinet members that failed in their jobs?”
“We can write it into his speech, though the public has no idea who they are.”
“We haven’t said anything about his being sorry that he was against the Kyoto Treaty and didn’t believe in global warming.”
“We’ll save that for his speech to the Sierra Club convention in Alaska.”
“What do we do about energy?”
“He’ll say the oil companies and coal-mine owners can no longer gouge the American people, and as long as he’s president, gas prices will never go above $1.90 a gallon.”
A writer said, “We get the idea. We must make him look sincere when he says he’s sorry.”
“It would be better if he said it in his shirtsleeves. It shows he has the common touch.”
“Can we show film clips of Clinton when he apologized to the people for lying about what he did in the White House?”
The chief said, “Good idea. Half the people forgave him. Now we must start going to work. Each of us will take a future political speech and add in a paragraph about how he made a mistake.”
A writer said, “Suppose the press finds out that there is now a Department of Apology in the White House?”
The chief said, “We’ll say the president is sorry he had to do it. He is sorrier than any president who has ever lived in the White House.”
— Dawn/Tribune Media Services
| © DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2005 |
