No Way Out of the Settlement Conflict?
Wiliam Pfaff
Paris, June 25, 2009 – The Obama administration’s confrontation
with Israel over its colonies inside the Palestine territories began
as a test of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to enter
serious negotiations on a Middle Eastern settlement. It actually
possesses potential dimensions that few today imagine.
Netanyahu first counted on the Likud and settlement lobbies
in Washington to produce, as always in the past, a disingenuous
formula that would allow the colonies to continue to expropriate
Palestinian land and expand the settlements, while the American
government oversaw essentially meaningless negotiations with the
Palestinians.
The prime minister was just in Europe, and told
RAI, Italian state radio, that after President Barack Obama had
declared in his Cairo speech that the construction of new settlements
must stop, he – Netanyahu – had replied “No,” but had accepted
Obama’s call for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, which he
previously had refused, provided that it took place under specified
conditions.
The conditions would deny a prospective Palestine state of
full sovereignty, control of its frontiers or of its security,
economy and trade, airspace, and water and other natural resources.
The conditions are obviously unacceptable, as they are meant to be.
Netanyahu’s proposal constituted a message to the Palestinians that
they should expect nothing from his government, and to Barack Obama
that Israel expects the United States to ask nothing further from it,
and to resume the meaningless negotiations that have gone on since
the first George Bush tried and failed to confront Israel on
extension of the settlements.
The Israeli president went on to say, “I think the more we
spend time arguing about [the settlements] the more we waste time
instead of moving towards peace.”
On Wednesday he paid an official visit to France, expecting
congratulations on his agreement to the creation of a Palestinian
state. Instead, President Nicolas Sarkozy told him that France
“would no longer accept Israeli subterfuges meant to disguise colony
construction by the pretext of ‘natural growth’ in the settlements.”
This position already had been characterized by Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman as making it “impossible for Israel to
build synagogues or kindergartens, or to add rooms for expanding
families in the settlements.”
Lieberman, who immigrated to Israel from Moldavia, wishes Israel’s
Arab citizens – survivors of the original Arab population of what is
now Israel -- issued with special identity documents and encouraged
to quit Israel. One might think that if they did they would leave
real estate vacancies that could accommodate expanding Jewish settler
families.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to meet on Thursday in Paris with
former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, President Obama’s special envoy
on Middle Eastern affairs, but the meeting was canceled by the
American side (according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth),
and Mitchell stayed in Washington. The White Houses unofficially
made it known that there would be no further meetings with Netanyahu
until there was a real settlement freeze. (The Israeli denial of the
newspaper report, and the Washington statement that the cancellation
was mutual, were obvious flimflam.)
Now this is all very well, in principle a long-overdue restoration
of justice and realism to American policy on Israel and Palestine,
but what follows? Would the American position on a settlement freeze
be enforced with financial or political sanctions if the Netanyahu
government refused to yield?
Netanyahu was elected in order to defy the United States on the
colonies and on Palestinian statehood. Since few sensible people in
Israel wish to alienate Washington, the Netanyahu government, again
in principle, might be brought down by American sanctions.
What then? The settlement movement, which has gone on now for some
four decades, has become integral to the Israeli perception of
national destiny and national security. The number of Israeli
settlers in the West Bank and the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem now
approaches a half-million. The settlements with their connecting
roads, security installations and outposts dominate some 40 percent
of the West Bank Territories.
Geoffrey Aronson of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in
Washington, sympathetic to the Palestinians, writes in the
Foundation’s most recent newsletter that merely a freeze in
settlement construction would require Israel to “undo the system by
which the military establishment, the legislative and executive arms
of the state, settlers, and public, private, and supranational
communal organizations collaborate in the encouragement and expansion
of settlements.”
Major elements in the state administration, defense forces,
planning and budget agencies, and security programs and practices,
plus the incentives to individuals and business to develop the
settlements, would have to be undone.
He concludes that even a real freeze would require “an undertaking
so complex and requiring an Israeli political decision so profound
that no Israeli government would undertake [it] except as a result of
a broader decision to terminate [the entire occupation of the
Palestinian territories].”
That is wholly impossible without a huge, internationally-
guaranteed reconstruction of the security relationships of
Palestinians, Israelis, and the surrounding Arab states, which is all
but unimaginable. But then what is imaginable? Going on as things
are? Clarification of Obama administration policy is essential.
© Copyright Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
This article comes from William PFAFF
http://www.williampfaff.com
The URL for this article is:
http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=411
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Pakistani and North Korean Stockpiles; Gordon Prather on nuclear double standards
Pakistani and North Korean Stockpiles
Gordon Prather on nuclear double standards
http://original.antiwar.com/prather/2009/06/26/pakistani-and-north-korean-stockpiles/
Gordon Prather on nuclear double standards
http://original.antiwar.com/prather/2009/06/26/pakistani-and-north-korean-stockpiles/
The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16763183/TaibbiGoldmanSachs
The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi
The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi
Friday, June 26, 2009
Nixon administration pressured Israel on nukes
Nixon administration pressured Israel on nukes: The memorandum, part of a collection of memos and tape recordings released Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library, shows efforts to get Israel to sign the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This would have required Israel to open itself to international inspection and dismantle any nuclear weapons program it had.
http://www.kansascity.com/437/story/1276898.html
http://www.kansascity.com/437/story/1276898.html
The Prescience of Protest - Natan Sharansky, Los Angeles Times opinion.
The Prescience of Protest - Natan Sharansky, Los Angeles Times opinion.
Once again, the world is amazed. As with the seemingly sudden appearance of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, or the gaudy, grand-scale collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of that decade, the massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators. Who would have known? Who could have predicted this eruption of protest in a system so highly repressed, where a generally quiescent populace lives under such a deeply entrenched revolutionary regime? And yet, just as in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there were those in Iran who did know all along, who foresaw and even foretold today's events. These were Iran's democratic dissidents, some at home, some in exile, some having served long sentences in Iranian prisons or on their way to those prisons right now. At various Western conferences and forums in recent years, some of these dissidents even succeeded in gaining the ear of leaders of the free world. They were greeted with sincere expressions of sympathy and support - but also with silent skepticism. Surely their assessments of the Iranian situation were unreliable at best. Heroic they undoubtedly were, but objective? After all, they lacked access to classified information, to satellite photography and the other tools of modern intelligence-gathering. They could not see the whole picture.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-sharansky26-2009jun26,0,4086358.story
Once again, the world is amazed. As with the seemingly sudden appearance of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, or the gaudy, grand-scale collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of that decade, the massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators. Who would have known? Who could have predicted this eruption of protest in a system so highly repressed, where a generally quiescent populace lives under such a deeply entrenched revolutionary regime? And yet, just as in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there were those in Iran who did know all along, who foresaw and even foretold today's events. These were Iran's democratic dissidents, some at home, some in exile, some having served long sentences in Iranian prisons or on their way to those prisons right now. At various Western conferences and forums in recent years, some of these dissidents even succeeded in gaining the ear of leaders of the free world. They were greeted with sincere expressions of sympathy and support - but also with silent skepticism. Surely their assessments of the Iranian situation were unreliable at best. Heroic they undoubtedly were, but objective? After all, they lacked access to classified information, to satellite photography and the other tools of modern intelligence-gathering. They could not see the whole picture.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-sharansky26-2009jun26,0,4086358.story
Obama, the Neocons and Iran - Robert McFarlane, Wall Street Journal opinion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597229537457063.html
Obama, the Neocons and Iran - Robert McFarlane, Wall Street Journal opinion. One casualty of the Iraq war has been the confusion among politicians about the proper place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. Iran's recent election - which evoked a very vocal, frustrated opposition - brings into sharp focus the urgent need for clarity concerning this issue. Do we support those seeking freedom from oppression? And if so, how? It may do well to recall how we got into this confused state. Sixteen or so years ago a small circle of cold warriors, flush with victory, concluded that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union democracy and free enterprise had been vindicated. To these neoconservatives, the task of future American presidents would be to spread the gospel of democracy - using force if necessary - so that governments everywhere would become accountable to their people and thus less likely to wage war. In 2003, it was arguably democracy promotion, rather than the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which triggered the US invasion of Iraq. Throughout his two terms in office, President George W. Bush was an indefatigable advocate of democracy, even when it resulted in the victories of such un-Jeffersonian parties as Hezbollah and Hamas. Thus began the neocon versus realist battle. The current situation in Iran offers an opportunity to turn this debate in a less doctrinaire, more coherent direction.
Obama, the Neocons and Iran - Robert McFarlane, Wall Street Journal opinion. One casualty of the Iraq war has been the confusion among politicians about the proper place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. Iran's recent election - which evoked a very vocal, frustrated opposition - brings into sharp focus the urgent need for clarity concerning this issue. Do we support those seeking freedom from oppression? And if so, how? It may do well to recall how we got into this confused state. Sixteen or so years ago a small circle of cold warriors, flush with victory, concluded that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union democracy and free enterprise had been vindicated. To these neoconservatives, the task of future American presidents would be to spread the gospel of democracy - using force if necessary - so that governments everywhere would become accountable to their people and thus less likely to wage war. In 2003, it was arguably democracy promotion, rather than the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which triggered the US invasion of Iraq. Throughout his two terms in office, President George W. Bush was an indefatigable advocate of democracy, even when it resulted in the victories of such un-Jeffersonian parties as Hezbollah and Hamas. Thus began the neocon versus realist battle. The current situation in Iran offers an opportunity to turn this debate in a less doctrinaire, more coherent direction.
Other Options Haven’t Worked: Let’s Try Diplomacy by Haviland Smith
Other Options Haven’t Worked: Let’s Try Diplomacy
June 25, 2009
By Haviland Smith
Since the Second World War, the Republicans have said consistently that the Democrats’ main foreign policy problem is that they are either unable or unwilling to successfully and purposefully project American power abroad. In this context, there are three means by which we can project power abroad: We can do it with military operations, we can do it with covert, regime change/intelligence operations and we can do it with diplomatic operations.
Over those sixty-odd years, American administrations are said to have been involved in 32 cases of either military or covert intelligence projections of power in which we have attempted to overthrow sitting governments. They range from Korea through Iran and Cuba to Bosnia and Afghanistan. Democrat administrations have been involved in 10 of those operations where Republicans have supported 22. Some, like Korea, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq have been supported by both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Thus, it would appear that, successful or not, Republicans are better than twice as likely to project power through military or intelligence operations than are the Democrats.
Just what have all those operations really done for America? Let’s examine alleged US Intelligence or regime change operations first. Consider Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Costa Rica (1955), Syria (1957), Indonesia (1958), Dominican Republic (1960), Peru (1960), Equador (1960), Congo (1960), Cuba (1961), Brazil (1964), Chile (1972), Angola (1975) and Nicaragua (1981). Our “success” in installing Shah Reza Pahlavi in Iran haunts us to this day. Cuba helped solidify Castro in power. The remaining Latin America operations left us with a “big brother”, negative legacy that still infuriates our Latin neighbors. Ditto those in Africa and Islam.
Our military projections of power can be examined in Korea (1950-53), Viet Nam (1961-73), Lebanon (1982-84), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (Gulf) (1991), Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1994-95), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-date) and Iraq (2003-date). With the possible exception of Bosnia and Kosovo where we have dampened ethnic hatred at least for the moment (a positive outcome) and maybe Panama, all of which were of relatively minor international importance, it is really hard to see the benefits of our other, larger scale, military adventures. Korea remains divided and leaves a nuclear North Korea. Viet Nam was a loss. Afghanistan and Iraq do not look likely to be wins.
So, in relation to the amount of US national treasure poured into these military and intelligence adventures, the return seems pretty meager. That was obvious from the start in Korea and Viet Nam where we were motivated by a largely imagined communist threat. Yet, we went ahead, repeating the same behaviors for over sixty years, always finding a questionable, illusory threat, now terrorism, to justify our actions. And we still haven’t stopped. Or have we?
Surprisingly, President Obama has chosen to prolong the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, yet it would seem from his recent statements that a really basic change is underway in our foreign policy. He says we are not at war with Islam. He speaks of “respect” for Islam and of talking with Iran and perhaps even with the Taliban. It seems likely this new president is going to employ the most underused tool of power projection in our national arsenal, one that has not seen the light of day for almost eight years. – Diplomatic power.
And what happens? President Obama is attacked immediately by a cross-section of the press and the entire political spectrum as soft on terror, soft on Iran, soft on Islam, and soft on our enemies whoever they may be. Comfortable with the clearly unsuccessful past, these critics see anything other than confrontation with our adversaries as appeasement at best and capitulation at worst.
Today’s Republicans have come full circle. They have had their fling at projecting power through military and intelligence operations at the expense of coalition building and diplomacy. By any reasonable standard, they have come up empty. There is really nothing left for them to do but paint today’s Democrats as capitulators and appeasers who are soft on everything and unwilling or unable to appropriately project American power abroad!
If we read history, which most politicians and many of our most prolific media commentators apparently do not, then it is time to put our old military and intelligence projections of power aside, if only because they have not served our interests in the post-WWII world. We have not employed diplomatic power as a primary weapon for years. We really need to give it a chance, It is our best if not only option in today’s new, confusing and increasingly complicated world.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. A longtime resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.
June 25, 2009
By Haviland Smith
Since the Second World War, the Republicans have said consistently that the Democrats’ main foreign policy problem is that they are either unable or unwilling to successfully and purposefully project American power abroad. In this context, there are three means by which we can project power abroad: We can do it with military operations, we can do it with covert, regime change/intelligence operations and we can do it with diplomatic operations.
Over those sixty-odd years, American administrations are said to have been involved in 32 cases of either military or covert intelligence projections of power in which we have attempted to overthrow sitting governments. They range from Korea through Iran and Cuba to Bosnia and Afghanistan. Democrat administrations have been involved in 10 of those operations where Republicans have supported 22. Some, like Korea, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq have been supported by both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Thus, it would appear that, successful or not, Republicans are better than twice as likely to project power through military or intelligence operations than are the Democrats.
Just what have all those operations really done for America? Let’s examine alleged US Intelligence or regime change operations first. Consider Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Costa Rica (1955), Syria (1957), Indonesia (1958), Dominican Republic (1960), Peru (1960), Equador (1960), Congo (1960), Cuba (1961), Brazil (1964), Chile (1972), Angola (1975) and Nicaragua (1981). Our “success” in installing Shah Reza Pahlavi in Iran haunts us to this day. Cuba helped solidify Castro in power. The remaining Latin America operations left us with a “big brother”, negative legacy that still infuriates our Latin neighbors. Ditto those in Africa and Islam.
Our military projections of power can be examined in Korea (1950-53), Viet Nam (1961-73), Lebanon (1982-84), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (Gulf) (1991), Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1994-95), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-date) and Iraq (2003-date). With the possible exception of Bosnia and Kosovo where we have dampened ethnic hatred at least for the moment (a positive outcome) and maybe Panama, all of which were of relatively minor international importance, it is really hard to see the benefits of our other, larger scale, military adventures. Korea remains divided and leaves a nuclear North Korea. Viet Nam was a loss. Afghanistan and Iraq do not look likely to be wins.
So, in relation to the amount of US national treasure poured into these military and intelligence adventures, the return seems pretty meager. That was obvious from the start in Korea and Viet Nam where we were motivated by a largely imagined communist threat. Yet, we went ahead, repeating the same behaviors for over sixty years, always finding a questionable, illusory threat, now terrorism, to justify our actions. And we still haven’t stopped. Or have we?
Surprisingly, President Obama has chosen to prolong the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, yet it would seem from his recent statements that a really basic change is underway in our foreign policy. He says we are not at war with Islam. He speaks of “respect” for Islam and of talking with Iran and perhaps even with the Taliban. It seems likely this new president is going to employ the most underused tool of power projection in our national arsenal, one that has not seen the light of day for almost eight years. – Diplomatic power.
And what happens? President Obama is attacked immediately by a cross-section of the press and the entire political spectrum as soft on terror, soft on Iran, soft on Islam, and soft on our enemies whoever they may be. Comfortable with the clearly unsuccessful past, these critics see anything other than confrontation with our adversaries as appeasement at best and capitulation at worst.
Today’s Republicans have come full circle. They have had their fling at projecting power through military and intelligence operations at the expense of coalition building and diplomacy. By any reasonable standard, they have come up empty. There is really nothing left for them to do but paint today’s Democrats as capitulators and appeasers who are soft on everything and unwilling or unable to appropriately project American power abroad!
If we read history, which most politicians and many of our most prolific media commentators apparently do not, then it is time to put our old military and intelligence projections of power aside, if only because they have not served our interests in the post-WWII world. We have not employed diplomatic power as a primary weapon for years. We really need to give it a chance, It is our best if not only option in today’s new, confusing and increasingly complicated world.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. A longtime resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.
US Nuclear Umbrella: Double-Edged Sword for S. Korea From The Korea Times:
US Nuclear Umbrella: Double-Edged Sword for S. Korea
From The Korea Times:
Amid growing concern about North Korea's high-stake nuclear gamesmanship, the United State has vowed to provide an ``extended'' nuclear umbrella to South Korea, where no tactical nuclear weapons are present.
Debates are under way, however, on the effectiveness of this in the case of conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Proponents say the U.S. commitment to providing extended nuclear deterrence capabilities will help prevent the North from ``miscalculating'' that it would gain anything from missile and nuclear tests.
Opponents argue the U.S. nuclear deterrence pledge could only provoke the communist North and send the wrong message that Pyongyang is a recognized nuclear state.
Read more ....http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/06/120_47427.html
From The Korea Times:
Amid growing concern about North Korea's high-stake nuclear gamesmanship, the United State has vowed to provide an ``extended'' nuclear umbrella to South Korea, where no tactical nuclear weapons are present.
Debates are under way, however, on the effectiveness of this in the case of conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Proponents say the U.S. commitment to providing extended nuclear deterrence capabilities will help prevent the North from ``miscalculating'' that it would gain anything from missile and nuclear tests.
Opponents argue the U.S. nuclear deterrence pledge could only provoke the communist North and send the wrong message that Pyongyang is a recognized nuclear state.
Read more ....http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/06/120_47427.html
NEFA Foundation: Transcript of Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid's Al-Jazeera Interview By Evan Kohlmann
NEFA Foundation: Transcript of Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid's Al-Jazeera Interview
By Evan Kohlmann
nefayazid.jpgThe NEFA Foundation has obtained a transcript of an Arabic-language interview Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (a.k.a. “Shaykh Saeed”) gave to Al-Jazeera television on June 22, 2009. Asked about Pakistani nuclear weapons, Abu al-Yazid replied, "Allah-willing the nuclear weapons will not fall in the hand of the Americans, and the Muslims take them [weapons] and use them against the Americans Allah-willing.” Commenting on Hezbollah, he said, “Hezbollah, we do not consider it an Islamic Party and it is a rejectionist party as you know, and its loyalty is towards Iran…a complete loyalty. There is no relationship between us and them, and what we mean is the mujahideen from the people of Sunna like Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon; they are the ones we commend and the likes of them.” And addressing Iran, he stated, "Regarding Iran, we consider it a state of hypocrisy and schism, and it is the state that appears Muslim and claims Islam but in fact it fights the Muslims."
The English transcript can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
June 26, 2009 09:07 AM Link http://www.nefafoundation.org/documents-aqstatements.html#abuyazidqa0609
By Evan Kohlmann
nefayazid.jpgThe NEFA Foundation has obtained a transcript of an Arabic-language interview Shaykh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (a.k.a. “Shaykh Saeed”) gave to Al-Jazeera television on June 22, 2009. Asked about Pakistani nuclear weapons, Abu al-Yazid replied, "Allah-willing the nuclear weapons will not fall in the hand of the Americans, and the Muslims take them [weapons] and use them against the Americans Allah-willing.” Commenting on Hezbollah, he said, “Hezbollah, we do not consider it an Islamic Party and it is a rejectionist party as you know, and its loyalty is towards Iran…a complete loyalty. There is no relationship between us and them, and what we mean is the mujahideen from the people of Sunna like Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon; they are the ones we commend and the likes of them.” And addressing Iran, he stated, "Regarding Iran, we consider it a state of hypocrisy and schism, and it is the state that appears Muslim and claims Islam but in fact it fights the Muslims."
The English transcript can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
June 26, 2009 09:07 AM Link http://www.nefafoundation.org/documents-aqstatements.html#abuyazidqa0609
Obama's Used Green Team Meet the Retreads By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Obama's Used Green Team
Meet the Retreads
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Of all of Barack Obama's airy platitudes about change none were more vaporous than his platitudes about the environment and within that category Obama has had little at all to say about matters concerning public lands and endangered species. He is, it seems, letting his bureaucratic appointments do his talking for him. So now, five months into his administration, Obama's policy on natural resources is beginning to take shape. It is a disturbingly familiar shape, almost sinister.
It all started with the man in the hat, Ken Salazar, Obama's odd pick to head the Department of Interior. Odd because Salazar was largely detested in his own state, Colorado, by environmentalists for his repellent coziness with oil barons, the big ranchers and the water hogs. Odd because Salazar was close friends with the disgraced Alberto Gonzalez, the torturer's consigliere. Odd because Salazar backed many of the Bush administration's most rapacious assaults on the environment and environmental laws. Odder still because Salazar, in his new position as guardian of endangered species, had as a senator repeatedly advocated the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.
Salazar never hid his noxious positions behind a green mantle. Obama certainly knew what he was buying. And the president could have made a much different and refreshing choice by picking Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat, a Hispanic, a westerner and a true environmentalist who had helped to expose the cauldron of corruption inside the Bush Interior Department. Yes, Obama could have picked a western environmentalist; instead he tapped a prototypical western politician with deep ties to the water, oil, timber, ranching and mining industries. So the choice was deliberate and it presaged the deflating policies that are now beginning to stream out of his office, from siding with Sarah Palin against the polar bear to greenlighting dozens of Bush-era mountaintop removal mining operations across Appalachia. (As CounterPunch pointed out last fall, Obama and Palin have long since established symbiotic harmony on God's Pipeline, the proposed $30 billion natural gas pipeline that, if constructed, will slice across the tundra and boreal forests from Prudhoe Bay through Canada to Chicago.)
Salazar wasted no time in turning the Interior Department office into a hive of his homeboys. This group of lawyers and former colleagues have already earned the nickname the Colorado Mafia, Version Three. It's Version Three because Colorado Mafia Version One belonged to James Watt and his Loot-the-West zealots from the Mountain States Legal Fund. The Version Two update came in the form of Gale Norton and her own band of fanatics, some of whom remain embedded in the Department's HQ, just down the hall from Salazar's office.
Beyond a perverse obsession with Stetson hats, Salazar and Watt share some eerie resemblances. For starters, they look alike. There's a certain fleshy smugness to their facial features. Who knows if Salazar shares Watt's apocalyptic eschatology (Why save nature, Watt once quipped, when the end of the world is nigh.), but both men are arrogant, my-way-or-the-highway types. Watt's insolent demeanor put him to the right even of his patron Ronald Reagan and ultimately proved his downfall. Salazar may well meet the same fate—if Obama, knock-on-wood, doesn't nominate him for the next Supreme Court vacancy first. Most troubling, however, is the fact that both Watt and Salazar hold similar views on the purpose of the public estate, treating the national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands not as ecosystems but as living warehouses for the manufacture of stuff: lumber, paper, wedding rings, meat, energy.
With this stark profile in mind, it probably comes as no big shock that the man Salazar nominated to head the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting native wildlife and enforcing the Endangered Species Act, has viewed those responsibilities with indifference if not hostility. For the past twelve years, Sam Hamilton, whose nomination to head the agency is now pending before congress, has run the Southeast Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service, a swath of the country that has the dubious distinction of driving more species of wildlife to the brink of extinction than any other.
From Florida to Louisiana, the encroaching threats on native wildlife are manifest and relentless: chemical pollution, oil drilling, coastal development, clearcutting, wetland destruction and a political animus toward environmental laws (and environmentalists). And Sam Hamilton was not one to stand up against this grim state of affairs.
A detailed examination of Hamilton's tenure by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reveals his bleak record. During the period from 2004 through 2006, Hamilton's office performed 5,974 consultations on development projects (clearcuts, oil wells, golf courses, roads, housing developments and the like) in endangered species habitat. But Hamilton gave the green light to all of these projects, except one. By contrast, during the same period the Rocky Mountain Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service officially consulted on 586 planned projects and issued 100 objections or so-called jeopardy opinions. Hamilton has by far the weakest record of any of his colleagues on endangered species protection.
There's plenty of evidence to show that Hamilton routinely placed political considerations ahead of enforcing the wildlife protection laws. For example, in the agency's Vero Beach, Florida office Fish and Wildlife Service biologists wrote a joint letter in 2005 complaining that their supervisors had ordered them not to object to any project in endangered species habitat—no matter how ruinous.
Take the case of the highly endangered Florida panther. One of Hamilton's top lieutenants in Florida has been quoted as telling his subordinates that the big cat was a "zoo species" doomed to extinction and that to halt any developments projects in the panther's habitat would be a waste of time and political capital.
"Under Sam Hamilton, the Endangered Species Act has become a dead letter," says PEER's Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the White House announcement on Hamilton touted his "innovative conservation" work. "Apparently, the word 'no' is not part of 'innovative' in Mr. Hamilton's lexicon. To end the cycle of Endangered Species Act lawsuits, the Fish and Wildlife Service needs a director who is willing to follow the law and actually implement the Act. Hamilton's record suggests that he will extend the policies of Bush era rather than bring needed change."
Now this man has the fate of the jaguar, grizzly and northern spotted owl in his compromised hands. Feel the chill?
Over at the Agriculture Department Obama made a similarly cynical pick when he chose former Iowa governor Tom Vilsak to head the agency that oversees the national forests. Vilsak resides to the right of Salazar and not just in the sitting arrangement at Cabinet meetings. He is a post-Harken Iowa Democrat, which means he's essentially a Republican who believes in evolution six days a week. (He leaves such Midwestern heresies at the door on Sundays.) Think Earl Butz—minus the racist sense of humor (as far as we know).
Vilsak is a creature of industrial agriculture, a brusque advocate for the corporate titans that have laid waste the farmbelt: Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. As administrations come and go, these companies only tighten their stranglehold, poisoning the prairies, spreading their clones and frankencrops, sucking up the Oglalla aquifer, scalping topsoil and driving the small farmers under. It could have been different. Obama might have opted for change by selecting Wes Jackson of the Land Institute, food historian Michael Pollan or Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. Instead he opted for the old guard, a man with a test tube in one hand and Stihl chainsaw in the other.
Through a quirk of bureaucratic categorization, the Department of Agriculture is also in charge of the national forests. At 190 million acres, the national forests constitute the largest block of public lands and serve as the principal reservoir of biotic diversity and wilderness on the continent. They have also been under a near constant state of siege since the Reagan era: from clearcuts, mining operations, ORV morons, ski resorts and cattle and sheep grazing.
Since 1910, when public outrage erupted after President William Taft fired Gifford Pinchot for speaking out against the corrupt policies of Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger, the chief of the Forest Service had been treated as a civil service employee and, much like the director of the FBI and CIA, was considered immune from changes in presidential administrations. This all changed when Bill Clinton imperiously dismissed Dale Robertson as chief in 1994 and replaced him with Jack Ward Thomas, the former wildlife biologist who drafted Clinton's plan to resume logging in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. Thomas' tenure at the agency proved disastrous for the environment. In eight years of Clinton time, the Forest Service cut six times as much timber as the agency did under the Reagan and Bush I administrations combined. The pace of logging set by Thomas continued unabated during the Bush the Younger's administration.
So now Vilsak has given the boot to Gail Kimbell, Bush's compliant chief, and replaced her with a 32-year veteran of the agency named Tom Tidwell. Those were 32 of the darkest years in the Forest Service's long history, years darkened by a perpetual blizzard of sawdust. You will search Google in vain for any evidence that during the forest-banging years of the Bush administration, when Tidwell served as Regional Forester for the Northern Rockies, this man ever once stood up to Kimbell or her puppetmaster Mark Rey, who went from being the timber industry's top lobbyist to Bush's Undersecretary of Agriculture in charge of the national forests. (Point of interest: Rey, once known as the Skeletor of the Timber Industry for the hundreds of thousands of acres of clearcuts on his rapsheet, has now been retained as a fixer by WildLaw, an environmental law firm in Alabama -- retained without ever having issued a single mea culpa for his career as a top rank ecocider. You just can't make this stuff up, anymore.) No, Tidwell was no whistleblower. He was, in fact, a facilitator of forest destruction, eagerly implementing the Kimbell-Rey agenda to push clearcuts, mines, oil wells and roads into the heart of the big wild of Montana and Idaho.
Despite this dismal resumé, Tidwell's appointment received near unanimous plaudits, from timber companies, ORV user groups, mining firms and, yes, the Wilderness Society. Here's the assessment of Cliff Roady director the Montana Forest Products Association, a timber industry lobby outfit: "His appointment keeps things on a fairly steady course. He reported to Gail Kimbell, and they worked together really well. He's somebody we'd look forward to working with."
And here, singing harmony, are the tweets of Bob Eckey, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society, which some seasoned observers of environmental politics consider to be yet another timber industry lobby group: "Tidwell understands the American public's vision for a national forest has been changing."
During his tenure in Montana, Tidwell specialized in the art of coercive collaboration, a social manipulation technique that involves getting environmental groups to endorse destructive projects they would normally litigate to stop. Yet, when copiously lubricated with the magic words "collaboration" or "climate change" most environmentalists can be enticed to swallow even the most ghastly of clearcuts in the most ecologically sensitive sites, such as in grizzly habitat on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River near Glacier Park or in the fast-dwindling ponderosa pine forests of eastern Oregon.
One of Tidwell's highest priorities will, it seems, be turn the national forests into industrial biomass farms, all in the name of green energy. Under this destructive scheme, forests, young and old alike, will be clearcut, not for lumber, but as fuel to be burned in biomass power generators. Already officials in the big timber states of Oregon and Washington are crowing that they will soon be able to become the "Saudi Arabia" of biomass production. Did they run this past Smokey the Bear?
Of course, Smokey, that global icon of wildfire suppression, and Tidwell will, no doubt, find common ground on another ecological dubious project: thinning and post-fire salvage logging. We've reached the point where old-fashioned timber sales are a thing of the past. Now every logging operation will an ecological justification — specious though they all certainly turn out to be.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, one of the few green outfits to consistently stand up against Democratic Party-sponsored depredations on the environment, sued Tidwell at least 20 times during his time as regional forester in Missoula. There's no record of Tidwell being sued even once by Boise-Cascade, Plum Creek Timber or the Noranda Gold Mining Company.
Yet by and large, the mainstream environmental movement has muzzled itself while the Obama administration stocks the Interior Department with corporate lawyers, extraction-minded bureaucrats and Clinton-era retreads. This strategy of a self-imposed gag order will only serve to enable Salazar and Vilsak to pursue even more rapacious schemes without any fear of accountability.
The pattern of political conditioning has been honed to perfection. Every few weeks the Obama administration will drop a few meaningless crumbs--such as the reinstitution of the Clinton Roadless Area rule—toward the enviro establishment, which will greedily gobble them up one after the other until, like Hansel and Gretel with groupthink, they find themselves hopelessly lost in a vast maze of Obama-sanctioned clearcuts. After that, they won't even get a crumb.
On the environment, the transition between Bush and Obama has been disturbingly smooth when it should have been decisively abrupt.
Where will the administration meet its first roadblock? Who will erect it?
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06262009.html
Meet the Retreads
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Of all of Barack Obama's airy platitudes about change none were more vaporous than his platitudes about the environment and within that category Obama has had little at all to say about matters concerning public lands and endangered species. He is, it seems, letting his bureaucratic appointments do his talking for him. So now, five months into his administration, Obama's policy on natural resources is beginning to take shape. It is a disturbingly familiar shape, almost sinister.
It all started with the man in the hat, Ken Salazar, Obama's odd pick to head the Department of Interior. Odd because Salazar was largely detested in his own state, Colorado, by environmentalists for his repellent coziness with oil barons, the big ranchers and the water hogs. Odd because Salazar was close friends with the disgraced Alberto Gonzalez, the torturer's consigliere. Odd because Salazar backed many of the Bush administration's most rapacious assaults on the environment and environmental laws. Odder still because Salazar, in his new position as guardian of endangered species, had as a senator repeatedly advocated the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.
Salazar never hid his noxious positions behind a green mantle. Obama certainly knew what he was buying. And the president could have made a much different and refreshing choice by picking Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat, a Hispanic, a westerner and a true environmentalist who had helped to expose the cauldron of corruption inside the Bush Interior Department. Yes, Obama could have picked a western environmentalist; instead he tapped a prototypical western politician with deep ties to the water, oil, timber, ranching and mining industries. So the choice was deliberate and it presaged the deflating policies that are now beginning to stream out of his office, from siding with Sarah Palin against the polar bear to greenlighting dozens of Bush-era mountaintop removal mining operations across Appalachia. (As CounterPunch pointed out last fall, Obama and Palin have long since established symbiotic harmony on God's Pipeline, the proposed $30 billion natural gas pipeline that, if constructed, will slice across the tundra and boreal forests from Prudhoe Bay through Canada to Chicago.)
Salazar wasted no time in turning the Interior Department office into a hive of his homeboys. This group of lawyers and former colleagues have already earned the nickname the Colorado Mafia, Version Three. It's Version Three because Colorado Mafia Version One belonged to James Watt and his Loot-the-West zealots from the Mountain States Legal Fund. The Version Two update came in the form of Gale Norton and her own band of fanatics, some of whom remain embedded in the Department's HQ, just down the hall from Salazar's office.
Beyond a perverse obsession with Stetson hats, Salazar and Watt share some eerie resemblances. For starters, they look alike. There's a certain fleshy smugness to their facial features. Who knows if Salazar shares Watt's apocalyptic eschatology (Why save nature, Watt once quipped, when the end of the world is nigh.), but both men are arrogant, my-way-or-the-highway types. Watt's insolent demeanor put him to the right even of his patron Ronald Reagan and ultimately proved his downfall. Salazar may well meet the same fate—if Obama, knock-on-wood, doesn't nominate him for the next Supreme Court vacancy first. Most troubling, however, is the fact that both Watt and Salazar hold similar views on the purpose of the public estate, treating the national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands not as ecosystems but as living warehouses for the manufacture of stuff: lumber, paper, wedding rings, meat, energy.
With this stark profile in mind, it probably comes as no big shock that the man Salazar nominated to head the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting native wildlife and enforcing the Endangered Species Act, has viewed those responsibilities with indifference if not hostility. For the past twelve years, Sam Hamilton, whose nomination to head the agency is now pending before congress, has run the Southeast Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service, a swath of the country that has the dubious distinction of driving more species of wildlife to the brink of extinction than any other.
From Florida to Louisiana, the encroaching threats on native wildlife are manifest and relentless: chemical pollution, oil drilling, coastal development, clearcutting, wetland destruction and a political animus toward environmental laws (and environmentalists). And Sam Hamilton was not one to stand up against this grim state of affairs.
A detailed examination of Hamilton's tenure by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reveals his bleak record. During the period from 2004 through 2006, Hamilton's office performed 5,974 consultations on development projects (clearcuts, oil wells, golf courses, roads, housing developments and the like) in endangered species habitat. But Hamilton gave the green light to all of these projects, except one. By contrast, during the same period the Rocky Mountain Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service officially consulted on 586 planned projects and issued 100 objections or so-called jeopardy opinions. Hamilton has by far the weakest record of any of his colleagues on endangered species protection.
There's plenty of evidence to show that Hamilton routinely placed political considerations ahead of enforcing the wildlife protection laws. For example, in the agency's Vero Beach, Florida office Fish and Wildlife Service biologists wrote a joint letter in 2005 complaining that their supervisors had ordered them not to object to any project in endangered species habitat—no matter how ruinous.
Take the case of the highly endangered Florida panther. One of Hamilton's top lieutenants in Florida has been quoted as telling his subordinates that the big cat was a "zoo species" doomed to extinction and that to halt any developments projects in the panther's habitat would be a waste of time and political capital.
"Under Sam Hamilton, the Endangered Species Act has become a dead letter," says PEER's Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the White House announcement on Hamilton touted his "innovative conservation" work. "Apparently, the word 'no' is not part of 'innovative' in Mr. Hamilton's lexicon. To end the cycle of Endangered Species Act lawsuits, the Fish and Wildlife Service needs a director who is willing to follow the law and actually implement the Act. Hamilton's record suggests that he will extend the policies of Bush era rather than bring needed change."
Now this man has the fate of the jaguar, grizzly and northern spotted owl in his compromised hands. Feel the chill?
Over at the Agriculture Department Obama made a similarly cynical pick when he chose former Iowa governor Tom Vilsak to head the agency that oversees the national forests. Vilsak resides to the right of Salazar and not just in the sitting arrangement at Cabinet meetings. He is a post-Harken Iowa Democrat, which means he's essentially a Republican who believes in evolution six days a week. (He leaves such Midwestern heresies at the door on Sundays.) Think Earl Butz—minus the racist sense of humor (as far as we know).
Vilsak is a creature of industrial agriculture, a brusque advocate for the corporate titans that have laid waste the farmbelt: Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. As administrations come and go, these companies only tighten their stranglehold, poisoning the prairies, spreading their clones and frankencrops, sucking up the Oglalla aquifer, scalping topsoil and driving the small farmers under. It could have been different. Obama might have opted for change by selecting Wes Jackson of the Land Institute, food historian Michael Pollan or Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. Instead he opted for the old guard, a man with a test tube in one hand and Stihl chainsaw in the other.
Through a quirk of bureaucratic categorization, the Department of Agriculture is also in charge of the national forests. At 190 million acres, the national forests constitute the largest block of public lands and serve as the principal reservoir of biotic diversity and wilderness on the continent. They have also been under a near constant state of siege since the Reagan era: from clearcuts, mining operations, ORV morons, ski resorts and cattle and sheep grazing.
Since 1910, when public outrage erupted after President William Taft fired Gifford Pinchot for speaking out against the corrupt policies of Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger, the chief of the Forest Service had been treated as a civil service employee and, much like the director of the FBI and CIA, was considered immune from changes in presidential administrations. This all changed when Bill Clinton imperiously dismissed Dale Robertson as chief in 1994 and replaced him with Jack Ward Thomas, the former wildlife biologist who drafted Clinton's plan to resume logging in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. Thomas' tenure at the agency proved disastrous for the environment. In eight years of Clinton time, the Forest Service cut six times as much timber as the agency did under the Reagan and Bush I administrations combined. The pace of logging set by Thomas continued unabated during the Bush the Younger's administration.
So now Vilsak has given the boot to Gail Kimbell, Bush's compliant chief, and replaced her with a 32-year veteran of the agency named Tom Tidwell. Those were 32 of the darkest years in the Forest Service's long history, years darkened by a perpetual blizzard of sawdust. You will search Google in vain for any evidence that during the forest-banging years of the Bush administration, when Tidwell served as Regional Forester for the Northern Rockies, this man ever once stood up to Kimbell or her puppetmaster Mark Rey, who went from being the timber industry's top lobbyist to Bush's Undersecretary of Agriculture in charge of the national forests. (Point of interest: Rey, once known as the Skeletor of the Timber Industry for the hundreds of thousands of acres of clearcuts on his rapsheet, has now been retained as a fixer by WildLaw, an environmental law firm in Alabama -- retained without ever having issued a single mea culpa for his career as a top rank ecocider. You just can't make this stuff up, anymore.) No, Tidwell was no whistleblower. He was, in fact, a facilitator of forest destruction, eagerly implementing the Kimbell-Rey agenda to push clearcuts, mines, oil wells and roads into the heart of the big wild of Montana and Idaho.
Despite this dismal resumé, Tidwell's appointment received near unanimous plaudits, from timber companies, ORV user groups, mining firms and, yes, the Wilderness Society. Here's the assessment of Cliff Roady director the Montana Forest Products Association, a timber industry lobby outfit: "His appointment keeps things on a fairly steady course. He reported to Gail Kimbell, and they worked together really well. He's somebody we'd look forward to working with."
And here, singing harmony, are the tweets of Bob Eckey, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society, which some seasoned observers of environmental politics consider to be yet another timber industry lobby group: "Tidwell understands the American public's vision for a national forest has been changing."
During his tenure in Montana, Tidwell specialized in the art of coercive collaboration, a social manipulation technique that involves getting environmental groups to endorse destructive projects they would normally litigate to stop. Yet, when copiously lubricated with the magic words "collaboration" or "climate change" most environmentalists can be enticed to swallow even the most ghastly of clearcuts in the most ecologically sensitive sites, such as in grizzly habitat on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River near Glacier Park or in the fast-dwindling ponderosa pine forests of eastern Oregon.
One of Tidwell's highest priorities will, it seems, be turn the national forests into industrial biomass farms, all in the name of green energy. Under this destructive scheme, forests, young and old alike, will be clearcut, not for lumber, but as fuel to be burned in biomass power generators. Already officials in the big timber states of Oregon and Washington are crowing that they will soon be able to become the "Saudi Arabia" of biomass production. Did they run this past Smokey the Bear?
Of course, Smokey, that global icon of wildfire suppression, and Tidwell will, no doubt, find common ground on another ecological dubious project: thinning and post-fire salvage logging. We've reached the point where old-fashioned timber sales are a thing of the past. Now every logging operation will an ecological justification — specious though they all certainly turn out to be.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, one of the few green outfits to consistently stand up against Democratic Party-sponsored depredations on the environment, sued Tidwell at least 20 times during his time as regional forester in Missoula. There's no record of Tidwell being sued even once by Boise-Cascade, Plum Creek Timber or the Noranda Gold Mining Company.
Yet by and large, the mainstream environmental movement has muzzled itself while the Obama administration stocks the Interior Department with corporate lawyers, extraction-minded bureaucrats and Clinton-era retreads. This strategy of a self-imposed gag order will only serve to enable Salazar and Vilsak to pursue even more rapacious schemes without any fear of accountability.
The pattern of political conditioning has been honed to perfection. Every few weeks the Obama administration will drop a few meaningless crumbs--such as the reinstitution of the Clinton Roadless Area rule—toward the enviro establishment, which will greedily gobble them up one after the other until, like Hansel and Gretel with groupthink, they find themselves hopelessly lost in a vast maze of Obama-sanctioned clearcuts. After that, they won't even get a crumb.
On the environment, the transition between Bush and Obama has been disturbingly smooth when it should have been decisively abrupt.
Where will the administration meet its first roadblock? Who will erect it?
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06262009.html
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Consumer spending in Asia Shopaholics wanted Jun 25th 2009 | HONG KONG From The Economist print edition
Economist.com Web Bug from http://www.economist.com/images/blocks/spacer.gif
Consumer spending in Asia
Shopaholics wanted
Jun 25th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by S. Kambayashi
Illustration by S. Kambayashi
Can Asians replace Americans as a driver of global growth?
ASIA’S emerging economies are bouncing back much more strongly than any others. While America’s industrial production continued to slide in May, output in emerging Asia has regained its pre-crisis level (see chart 1). This is largely due to China; but although production in the region’s smaller economies is still well down on a year ago, it is rebounding in those countries too. Taiwan’s industrial output rose by an annualised 80% in the three months to May compared with the previous three months. JPMorgan estimates that emerging Asia’s GDP has grown by an annualised 7% in the second quarter.
Asia’s ability to decouple from America reflects the fact that the region’s downturn was caused only partly by the slump in American activity. In most Asian economies falling domestic demand was more important than the drop in net exports in explaining the collapse in GDP growth. The surge in food and energy prices in the first half of 2008 squeezed profits and spending power. Tighter monetary policy aimed at curbing inflation then further choked domestic demand.
The recent recovery in industrial production reflects the end of destocking by manufacturers as well as the large fiscal stimulus by most governments. But the boost from both of these factors will fade. Meanwhile, export markets in developed economies are likely to remain weak. So the recovery in Asian economies will stumble unless domestic spending, notably consumption, perks up.
Consumers’ appetite to spend varies hugely across the region. In China, India and Indonesia spending has increased by annual rates of more than 5% during the global downturn. China’s retail sales have soared by 15% over the past year. This overstates the true growth rate because it includes government purchases, but official household surveys suggest that real spending is growing at a still-impressive rate of 9%. In the year to May, sales of household electronics were up by 12%, clothing by 22% and cars by a stunning 47%.
Elsewhere in the region, spending has stumbled, squeezed by higher unemployment and lower wages. In Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea real consumer spending was 4-5% lower in the first quarter than a year earlier, a much bigger drop than in America. But Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC, sees tentative signs that spending is picking up. Taiwan’s retail sales rose in May for the third consecutive month. Department-store sales in South Korea rose by 5% in the year to May.
It is often argued that emerging Asian economies have large current-account surpluses—and are thus not pulling their fair weight in the world—because consumers like to save rather than spend. Yet this does not really fit the facts. During the past five years consumer spending in emerging Asia has grown by an annual average of 6.5%, much faster than in any other part of the world. It is true that consumption has fallen as a share of GDP, but that is because investment and exports have grown even faster, not because spending has been weak. Relative to American consumer spending, Asian consumption has soared (see chart 2).
In most Asian economies, private consumption is 50-60% of GDP, which is not out of line with rates in countries at similar levels of income elsewhere. China, however, is an exception. Private consumption there fell from 46% of GDP in 2000 to only 35% last year—half that in America. In dollar terms, spending is only one-sixth of that in America. (Singapore’s consumption is also low, at just under 40% of GDP.)
This explains why China’s government has recently taken bolder action than others to boost consumption. Over the past six months the government in Beijing has introduced a host of incentives to encourage households to open their wallets. Rural residents get subsidies for buying vehicles and other goods such as televisions, refrigerators, computers and mobile phones; urban residents get a subsidy if they trade in cars and home appliances for new goods; tax rates on low-emission cars have also been cut. There is huge potential for higher consumption in the countryside as incomes rise: only 30% of rural households have a refrigerator, for example, compared with virtually all urban households.
The government has also introduced several measures this year to improve the social safety net, such as spending more on health care, pensions and payments to low-income households. On June 19th it ordered all state-owned firms that had listed on the stockmarket since 2005 to transfer 10% of their shares to the National Social Security Fund to shore up its assets. The short-term impact is likely to be modest but if such measures ease households’ worries about future pensions and health care, it could in the long term encourage them to save less and spend more.
Another way to boost consumption is to make it easier to borrow. In most Asian economies household debt is less than 50% of GDP, compared with around 100% in many developed economies; in China and India it is less than 15%. South Korea is the big exception: households have as much debt relative to their income as Americans and their saving rate has fallen over the past decade from 18% of disposable income to only 4%. In many other Asian economies financing for consumer durables is virtually nonexistent. Promisingly, the Chinese bank regulator announced draft rules in May to allow domestic and foreign institutions to set up consumer-finance firms to offer personal loans for consumer-goods purchases.
These measures are a modest step in the right direction. But a bigger test of Asian governments’ resolve to shift the balance of growth from exports towards domestic spending is whether they will allow their exchange rates to rise. A revaluation would lift consumers’ real purchasing power and give firms reason to shift resources towards producing for the domestic market. But so far, policymakers have been reluctant to let currencies rise too fast.
Asian spending is already an important engine of global growth. Even before the crisis, emerging Asia’s consumer spending contributed slightly more (in absolute dollar terms) to the growth in global demand than did America’s. But it could be even bigger if Asians enjoyed the full fruits of their hard labour, rather than subsidising Western consumers through undervalued currencies. It is time for an even greater shift in spending power from the West to the East.
Consumer spending in Asia
Shopaholics wanted
Jun 25th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by S. Kambayashi
Illustration by S. Kambayashi
Can Asians replace Americans as a driver of global growth?
ASIA’S emerging economies are bouncing back much more strongly than any others. While America’s industrial production continued to slide in May, output in emerging Asia has regained its pre-crisis level (see chart 1). This is largely due to China; but although production in the region’s smaller economies is still well down on a year ago, it is rebounding in those countries too. Taiwan’s industrial output rose by an annualised 80% in the three months to May compared with the previous three months. JPMorgan estimates that emerging Asia’s GDP has grown by an annualised 7% in the second quarter.
Asia’s ability to decouple from America reflects the fact that the region’s downturn was caused only partly by the slump in American activity. In most Asian economies falling domestic demand was more important than the drop in net exports in explaining the collapse in GDP growth. The surge in food and energy prices in the first half of 2008 squeezed profits and spending power. Tighter monetary policy aimed at curbing inflation then further choked domestic demand.
The recent recovery in industrial production reflects the end of destocking by manufacturers as well as the large fiscal stimulus by most governments. But the boost from both of these factors will fade. Meanwhile, export markets in developed economies are likely to remain weak. So the recovery in Asian economies will stumble unless domestic spending, notably consumption, perks up.
Consumers’ appetite to spend varies hugely across the region. In China, India and Indonesia spending has increased by annual rates of more than 5% during the global downturn. China’s retail sales have soared by 15% over the past year. This overstates the true growth rate because it includes government purchases, but official household surveys suggest that real spending is growing at a still-impressive rate of 9%. In the year to May, sales of household electronics were up by 12%, clothing by 22% and cars by a stunning 47%.
Elsewhere in the region, spending has stumbled, squeezed by higher unemployment and lower wages. In Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea real consumer spending was 4-5% lower in the first quarter than a year earlier, a much bigger drop than in America. But Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC, sees tentative signs that spending is picking up. Taiwan’s retail sales rose in May for the third consecutive month. Department-store sales in South Korea rose by 5% in the year to May.
It is often argued that emerging Asian economies have large current-account surpluses—and are thus not pulling their fair weight in the world—because consumers like to save rather than spend. Yet this does not really fit the facts. During the past five years consumer spending in emerging Asia has grown by an annual average of 6.5%, much faster than in any other part of the world. It is true that consumption has fallen as a share of GDP, but that is because investment and exports have grown even faster, not because spending has been weak. Relative to American consumer spending, Asian consumption has soared (see chart 2).
In most Asian economies, private consumption is 50-60% of GDP, which is not out of line with rates in countries at similar levels of income elsewhere. China, however, is an exception. Private consumption there fell from 46% of GDP in 2000 to only 35% last year—half that in America. In dollar terms, spending is only one-sixth of that in America. (Singapore’s consumption is also low, at just under 40% of GDP.)
This explains why China’s government has recently taken bolder action than others to boost consumption. Over the past six months the government in Beijing has introduced a host of incentives to encourage households to open their wallets. Rural residents get subsidies for buying vehicles and other goods such as televisions, refrigerators, computers and mobile phones; urban residents get a subsidy if they trade in cars and home appliances for new goods; tax rates on low-emission cars have also been cut. There is huge potential for higher consumption in the countryside as incomes rise: only 30% of rural households have a refrigerator, for example, compared with virtually all urban households.
The government has also introduced several measures this year to improve the social safety net, such as spending more on health care, pensions and payments to low-income households. On June 19th it ordered all state-owned firms that had listed on the stockmarket since 2005 to transfer 10% of their shares to the National Social Security Fund to shore up its assets. The short-term impact is likely to be modest but if such measures ease households’ worries about future pensions and health care, it could in the long term encourage them to save less and spend more.
Another way to boost consumption is to make it easier to borrow. In most Asian economies household debt is less than 50% of GDP, compared with around 100% in many developed economies; in China and India it is less than 15%. South Korea is the big exception: households have as much debt relative to their income as Americans and their saving rate has fallen over the past decade from 18% of disposable income to only 4%. In many other Asian economies financing for consumer durables is virtually nonexistent. Promisingly, the Chinese bank regulator announced draft rules in May to allow domestic and foreign institutions to set up consumer-finance firms to offer personal loans for consumer-goods purchases.
These measures are a modest step in the right direction. But a bigger test of Asian governments’ resolve to shift the balance of growth from exports towards domestic spending is whether they will allow their exchange rates to rise. A revaluation would lift consumers’ real purchasing power and give firms reason to shift resources towards producing for the domestic market. But so far, policymakers have been reluctant to let currencies rise too fast.
Asian spending is already an important engine of global growth. Even before the crisis, emerging Asia’s consumer spending contributed slightly more (in absolute dollar terms) to the growth in global demand than did America’s. But it could be even bigger if Asians enjoyed the full fruits of their hard labour, rather than subsidising Western consumers through undervalued currencies. It is time for an even greater shift in spending power from the West to the East.
Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements The U.S. and Israel reached a clear understanding about natural growth. By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
Abrams fuzzes the fact that the Bush Administration and the Israeli Government abandoned any effort to define settlement boundaries, so there was no agreement on where a settlement's borders ended. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer reports this in a recent article on settlements.
WSJ/Opinion
Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements
The U.S. and Israel reached a clear understanding about natural growth.
By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.
In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The "Roadmap for Peace" between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next?
We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?
We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?
As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could -- under certain conditions -- now agree to Palestinian statehood.
In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: "It is in Israel's interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state." At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally -- including every single settlement and the "Philadelphi Strip" separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.
These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.
After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.
Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, "a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."
On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the "1967 borders" to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders -- correctly -- as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.
On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements."
Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.
They were not secret, either. Four days after the president's letter, Mr. Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria."
Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed "agreed principles." On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that "the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward."
In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility."
These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.
It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel "memorandum of understanding," which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the "official record of the administration" contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.
Mrs. Clinton also said there were no "enforceable" agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?
Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements -- and confront his former allies on Israel's right by abandoning the "Greater Israel" position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.
Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
A rebuttal from Lara Friedman on Americans for Peace Now Policy Blog.
25 Jun 2009 09:13 am
The Settlers’ Lawyer (or, Elliott Abrams Is At It Again)
June 25, 2009, posted by Lara Friedman
On May 23, 2005, the Washington Post ran a an incisive op-ed by former State Department negotiator and Middle East advisor Aaron Miller, entitled “Israel’s Lawyer,” in which Aaron argued “For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney…” I was reminded of that article when I read today’s piece by Elliott Abrams in the Wall Street Journal, which should, I believe, have been entitled “The West Bank Settlers’ Lawyer.”
Before anyone accuses me of casting aspersions on Mr. Abrams’ honor or motivations, let me be clear: I have no doubt he has taken the case pro bono. For him, advocating for the settlers is clearly a labor of love. And the settlers are fortunate to have Elliott volunteering for the job. He brings a unique combination of expertise and experience, combined, it would seem, with a shameless willingness to cherry-pick the facts and, when the facts don’t support his argument, to fall back on the “I was there and I know what happened.”
An interesting approach from a man who does not have a spotless record when it comes to truth-telling and foreign policy (for anyone who has forgotten the history: “Elliott Abrams — Pleaded guilty October 7, 1991, to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about secret government efforts to support the Nicaraguan contra rebels during a ban on such aid. U.S. District Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., sentenced Abrams November 15, 1991, to two years probation and 100 hours community service. Abrams was pardoned December 24, 1992.”)
But that was a long time ago. Let’s forgot the ugly and embarrassing Iran-Contra history and focus on the “facts” in the current case, as Elliott sees them:
In today’s WSJ article, Elliott offers an almost completely unverifiable history of what he says transpired between June 2003 and August 2005 (the date of Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza). Predictably, he focuses on the letter President Bush gave to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004. In that letter, Elliott notes (correctly), Bush wrote: “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
What Elliott neglects to mention is that in the letter Bush also re-stated his commitment to the Roadmap (”the United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described in the roadmap”), which in stage I states that “Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).”
Elliott then goes on to assert that “On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth.” His evidence of such an agreement? Exhibit A: A statement by Prime Minister Sharon, not President Bush: “Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: ‘Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.’”
Is this extremely experienced lawyer and foreign policy professional seriously arguing that a statement by Sharon should be understood as an accurate articulation of US policy, even in the absence of any corroborating statement by the US President? Even when that lengthy policy speech went into a range of issue where - at least officially - there was public disagreement with the US? (for example, in this same speech Sharon makes clear Israel views the Roadmap commitments as sequential - the Palestinians do everything they have to do, and only then does Israel act. ) Apparently so.
But it gets better. For further evidence, Elliott asserts that, really, the US agreed with everything Sharon was saying. His evidence? Exhibit B: Aletter from Ariel Sharon’s Chief of Staff, Dov Weissglas, Secretary of State Rice.
It is like saying “your honor, I swear my client did not sideswipe that car in the parking lot. I was there and I saw the whole thing. And as proof I give you my statement and a statement from my client and his wife, written to the owner of the damaged car, making clear that they were not the ones who hit his car. I rest my case.”
So there are not quotes from President Bush or Secretary Rice to support Elliott’s narrative - only statements by Israeli officials.
But Elliot has more proof to bring before the court: media reports. Exhibit #C: Elliott notes that “Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed ‘agreed principles.’ On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that ‘the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward.’”
Interesting. So if the NYT reported it, it must be true, right? Or rather, what must be true is that they were reporting what someone told them, at the time. And according to the first paragraph of the article Elliott cites, the source is: “American and Israeli officials.” Who could these officials be? Could they be Abrams himself (who at this point can no longer deny that he is personally invested in such a policy), and maybe Dov Weissglas? There is no way to know, but regardless, this is clearly not definitive proof of anything, other than the fact that there were Israeli and US officials spinning the story this way.
The rest of Elliott’s article is simply hearsay and innuendo, speculation, and conjecture - not a single “fact” that can be examined, let alone refuted. Elliott rests his case on statements by two Israeli officials who never hid their desire to do everything possible to keep building West Bank settlements, and press reports based on un-named US and Israeli officials.
With this kind of evidence, it is hard to see why the jury is still debating this case at all. Clearly the settlers’ have a really excellent lawyer.
———
And since some of us prefer to rely on facts, rather than clever argumentation and bombastic statements, here are some actual statements by President Bush about settlements, from the same period Elliott is addressing:
President Bush 9/21/04: “…Israel should impose a settlement freeze, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations…”
President Bush, 11/27/07: “…Israel must demonstrate its support for the creation of a prosperous and successful Palestinian state by removing unauthorized outposts, ending settlement expansion, and finding other ways for the Palestinian Authority to exercise its responsibilities without compromising Israel’s security.”
President Bush, 1/9/2008: “…The second track is to help both parties deal with road map issues. Settlements is a road map issue…”
President Bush, 1/10/2008: “…Each side has got obligations under the road map. Settlements are clearly stated in the road map obligations for Israel. We have made our concerns about expansion of settlements known, and we expect both parties to honor their obligations under the road map.”
WSJ/Opinion
Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements
The U.S. and Israel reached a clear understanding about natural growth.
By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.
In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The "Roadmap for Peace" between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next?
We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?
We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?
As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could -- under certain conditions -- now agree to Palestinian statehood.
In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: "It is in Israel's interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state." At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally -- including every single settlement and the "Philadelphi Strip" separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.
These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.
After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.
Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, "a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."
On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the "1967 borders" to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders -- correctly -- as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.
On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements."
Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.
They were not secret, either. Four days after the president's letter, Mr. Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria."
Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed "agreed principles." On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that "the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward."
In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility."
These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.
It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel "memorandum of understanding," which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the "official record of the administration" contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.
Mrs. Clinton also said there were no "enforceable" agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?
Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements -- and confront his former allies on Israel's right by abandoning the "Greater Israel" position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.
Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
A rebuttal from Lara Friedman on Americans for Peace Now Policy Blog.
25 Jun 2009 09:13 am
The Settlers’ Lawyer (or, Elliott Abrams Is At It Again)
June 25, 2009, posted by Lara Friedman
On May 23, 2005, the Washington Post ran a an incisive op-ed by former State Department negotiator and Middle East advisor Aaron Miller, entitled “Israel’s Lawyer,” in which Aaron argued “For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney…” I was reminded of that article when I read today’s piece by Elliott Abrams in the Wall Street Journal, which should, I believe, have been entitled “The West Bank Settlers’ Lawyer.”
Before anyone accuses me of casting aspersions on Mr. Abrams’ honor or motivations, let me be clear: I have no doubt he has taken the case pro bono. For him, advocating for the settlers is clearly a labor of love. And the settlers are fortunate to have Elliott volunteering for the job. He brings a unique combination of expertise and experience, combined, it would seem, with a shameless willingness to cherry-pick the facts and, when the facts don’t support his argument, to fall back on the “I was there and I know what happened.”
An interesting approach from a man who does not have a spotless record when it comes to truth-telling and foreign policy (for anyone who has forgotten the history: “Elliott Abrams — Pleaded guilty October 7, 1991, to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about secret government efforts to support the Nicaraguan contra rebels during a ban on such aid. U.S. District Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., sentenced Abrams November 15, 1991, to two years probation and 100 hours community service. Abrams was pardoned December 24, 1992.”)
But that was a long time ago. Let’s forgot the ugly and embarrassing Iran-Contra history and focus on the “facts” in the current case, as Elliott sees them:
In today’s WSJ article, Elliott offers an almost completely unverifiable history of what he says transpired between June 2003 and August 2005 (the date of Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza). Predictably, he focuses on the letter President Bush gave to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004. In that letter, Elliott notes (correctly), Bush wrote: “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
What Elliott neglects to mention is that in the letter Bush also re-stated his commitment to the Roadmap (”the United States remains committed to my vision and to its implementation as described in the roadmap”), which in stage I states that “Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).”
Elliott then goes on to assert that “On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth.” His evidence of such an agreement? Exhibit A: A statement by Prime Minister Sharon, not President Bush: “Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: ‘Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.’”
Is this extremely experienced lawyer and foreign policy professional seriously arguing that a statement by Sharon should be understood as an accurate articulation of US policy, even in the absence of any corroborating statement by the US President? Even when that lengthy policy speech went into a range of issue where - at least officially - there was public disagreement with the US? (for example, in this same speech Sharon makes clear Israel views the Roadmap commitments as sequential - the Palestinians do everything they have to do, and only then does Israel act. ) Apparently so.
But it gets better. For further evidence, Elliott asserts that, really, the US agreed with everything Sharon was saying. His evidence? Exhibit B: Aletter from Ariel Sharon’s Chief of Staff, Dov Weissglas, Secretary of State Rice.
It is like saying “your honor, I swear my client did not sideswipe that car in the parking lot. I was there and I saw the whole thing. And as proof I give you my statement and a statement from my client and his wife, written to the owner of the damaged car, making clear that they were not the ones who hit his car. I rest my case.”
So there are not quotes from President Bush or Secretary Rice to support Elliott’s narrative - only statements by Israeli officials.
But Elliot has more proof to bring before the court: media reports. Exhibit #C: Elliott notes that “Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed ‘agreed principles.’ On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that ‘the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward.’”
Interesting. So if the NYT reported it, it must be true, right? Or rather, what must be true is that they were reporting what someone told them, at the time. And according to the first paragraph of the article Elliott cites, the source is: “American and Israeli officials.” Who could these officials be? Could they be Abrams himself (who at this point can no longer deny that he is personally invested in such a policy), and maybe Dov Weissglas? There is no way to know, but regardless, this is clearly not definitive proof of anything, other than the fact that there were Israeli and US officials spinning the story this way.
The rest of Elliott’s article is simply hearsay and innuendo, speculation, and conjecture - not a single “fact” that can be examined, let alone refuted. Elliott rests his case on statements by two Israeli officials who never hid their desire to do everything possible to keep building West Bank settlements, and press reports based on un-named US and Israeli officials.
With this kind of evidence, it is hard to see why the jury is still debating this case at all. Clearly the settlers’ have a really excellent lawyer.
———
And since some of us prefer to rely on facts, rather than clever argumentation and bombastic statements, here are some actual statements by President Bush about settlements, from the same period Elliott is addressing:
President Bush 9/21/04: “…Israel should impose a settlement freeze, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations…”
President Bush, 11/27/07: “…Israel must demonstrate its support for the creation of a prosperous and successful Palestinian state by removing unauthorized outposts, ending settlement expansion, and finding other ways for the Palestinian Authority to exercise its responsibilities without compromising Israel’s security.”
President Bush, 1/9/2008: “…The second track is to help both parties deal with road map issues. Settlements is a road map issue…”
President Bush, 1/10/2008: “…Each side has got obligations under the road map. Settlements are clearly stated in the road map obligations for Israel. We have made our concerns about expansion of settlements known, and we expect both parties to honor their obligations under the road map.”
Bitterlemons Middle East Roundtable The events in Iran: Arab reactions June 25, 2009
Edition 24 Volume 7 - June 25, 2009
The events in Iran: Arab reactions • The dilemma of Arab nationalists - Rime Allaf
Iran's problem is everyone's problem in so many ways. • Amman maintains calculated stance - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
Jordanian officials, politicians and security analysts agree that Iran's election has exposed deep divisions within Iran, which they welcome. • Regional political effects, inspiration to opposition forces - Riad Kahwaji
The Iranian riots must have grabbed the attention of active opposition forces in Syria, Egypt and Bahrain. • Iran is in crisis; so is the Middle East - Gamal A. G. Soltan
Escalation on the Lebanon and/or Gaza front is likely.
The dilemma of Arab nationalists
Rime Allaf
While the entire word is gripped with the political turmoil in Iran, its closest neighbors have been collectively pretending not to notice there really is a problem at all. At first unable to contain their enthusiasm with the opposition to a regime they've collectively hated for 30 years, various official media outlets have mellowed their tone and practically reverted to the "domestic Iranian matter" line.
And yet Iran's problem is everyone's problem in so many ways. Since the advent of the Islamic Republic in a revolution that swept the Shah from power, most Arab countries have at best been uneasy neighbors to Iran, and at worst aggressors. The Iranians had barely begun to come to terms with the fact of having dismissed the Shah when the proxy wars against them began in earnest.
Fighting the dirty war of the bloc of superpowers arming him, Saddam Hussein attacked Iran and bled both countries dry for eight years, especially once the full impact of the US's dual containment policy was felt. No wonder the Iranians didn't warm to their neighborhood. Apart from Syria, which particularly enjoyed the fall of one of Israel's greatest allies and was united with Iran in a common hatred of Saddam Hussein, Arab countries were predominantly hostile.
Arab wariness stemmed less from the fact of the Iranian revolution than the banner under which it was fought. That the powerful, well-armed and internationally supported Shah could fall so easily was one thing: that the revolutionaries did it in the name of Islam was another. For the first time in centuries, two rival blocs faced off to claim leadership of a huge global Muslim community. Both also sat on large oil resources that helped finance their new activism, supporting numerous groups with political and religious agendas. These confronting alignments have now endured for decades, creating a complex set of relations, that it is crucial to understand as an introduction to the way forward, when some Arabs are now more pro-Iranian regime than before, in direct opposition to the critics siding with the "moderate" group.
The mutual animosity between the competing Iranian and Arab regimes, seeping through their respective media outlets, has been evident for years, especially since the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, the animosity has filtered down to the popular level, fuelled by inflammatory rhetoric (mostly from the anti-Iranian side) and turning anti-Iranian positions into anti-Shi'ite ones, exacerbated by Iraq and Lebanon and the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict or, more correctly, the Palestinian cause.
There is no doubt that Israel plays a role in this divide, being in fact the lowest common denominator. With the Iranian regime (alongside Syria) openly supporting the so-called radical elements of the Palestinian resistance, and with Saudi Arabia having sided with the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority, Arabs actively opposing Israel have made their choice. The situation is even more pronounced in Lebanon, where the resistance to Israel is the sole domain of Hizballah, a militant group whose umbilical tie to Iran seems to trump most other considerations.
Today, tens of thousands of Iranians are protesting against their regime, officially because of a dubious election which even authorities admit had irregularities, and unofficially because many of them are vying for a relaxation of the strict rules that govern their lives. Importantly, many have expressed their specific distaste for Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's needlessly confrontational stances, his foreign policy and his absurd habit of putting into doubt the history of the Holocaust--all of which has only made their isolation more pronounced.
For many Iranians, popular Arab support for Ahmadinezhad remains unpalatable and unforgivable. It makes little sense to them that people who support freedom and self-determination for one people (the Palestinians, for instance) would also support a leader whose domestic rule has been controversial to say the least. Increasingly, young Iranians are expressing anti-Arab sentiments based mostly on their regime's support of Hizballah (and to a lesser extent Hamas).
Arab nationalists, and Arab liberals to a certain extent, have a serious problem. With the noble causes they espouse, they should technically be equally critical of such regimes. And yet, because of the Iranian regime's staunch support for Palestinian groups and for the Palestinian cause in general, many Arabs have spared Ahmadinezhad and his regime from the stinging reproaches they extend to other rulers.
Is the enemy of our enemy necessarily our friend, regardless of other factors? Have we become so desperate for support for the Palestinian cause that we would become bedfellows with the least savory of characters? This is not the first time this would have happened. Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who oppressed his own people for decades, acted so magnanimously with Palestinians that Yasser Arafat chose to side with Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, with disastrous consequences for Palestinians. Likewise, the farcical Muammar Qadhafi remained a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause while his own people suffered. Many critics of Arab regimes also fall silent on Syria, precisely because of its vocal support for the various militant groups.
Arab nationalists have often explained themselves on this thorny issue, arguing that the choice of allies was dictated by the magnitude of the Palestinian problem and all the issues still touching on Israel. Unfortunately, this position has created huge resentment from the people ruled by the likes of Saddam Hussein, and anti-Palestinian sentiment was common for a long time. Similarly, the antics of Ahmadinezhad have been completely counterproductive, detrimental to the Palestinian cause and resented by many Iranians.
There must come a point when supporters of freedom for Palestinians, under a brutal military occupation and living in much worse conditions than most people, must take the same stand for others, even if the latter live in relatively milder conditions. Until then, we must not be surprised when Iranians, like Iraqis before them, stop caring about fundamental causes, no matter how righteous.- Published 25/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rime Allaf is an associate fellow at Chatham House, London.
Amman maintains calculated stance
Rana Sabbagh-GargourTwo weeks into Iran's post-election intifada, official Jordan is maintaining a low profile to make sure Amman stands on the right side of history. In a situation so delicate, King Abdullah II, who has long viewed Iran as a main source of instability in the region, prefers to keep Jordan out of the momentous internal Iranian drama that has been unfolding since the June 12 vote.
Taking its cue from the United States, its key western ally, Amman will not acknowledge the results of the heavily contested vote, which brought back hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad. But unlike Washington, Amman is also not ready to condemn the heavy security crackdown on pro-reform supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is challenging the election result.
For now, Jordan's calculated position is sparing the government criticism from the influential Islamic-led opposition, which says it backs "Ahmadinezhad's Iran". The opposition feels indebted to him mostly because he backs its Palestinian ally, Hamas, now controlling the Gaza Strip and challenging the legitimacy of the Jordanian-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Political ties between Amman and Tehran have ebbed and flowed since Jordan sided with Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran. Amman has often accused Tehran of attempts to destabilize the kingdom by supporting militant groups to sabotage Amman's 1994 peace treaty with Israel or inciting hatred against the regime.
Iranian leaders, meanwhile, have not forgiven the king for warning, shortly before the start of the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, that the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-controlled regime would give rise to an Iranian-led "Shi'ite crescent" sphere of influence, stretching from Iran to Iraq, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Jordanian officials, like representatives of the relatively moderate, pro-western governments in Ramallah, Cairo, Beirut, Riyadh and elsewhere, fear any overtures of support to Mousavi might undermine the very forces they and the US would like to see strengthened. In private, however, they say they would have liked to see him replace Ahmadinezhad, who will have difficulty engaging with President Obama or changing his childish political rhetoric that appeals to the lowest common denominator on the Arab street.
Jordanian media, like many politicians, remain divided over the intentions of Mr. Mousavi, a former prime minister, and the powerful counter-elite behind him. Journalists are asking if it is better to reform the system or overthrow it. Many in Jordan had hoped that a weakened, if not changed, regime led by Mousavi, the "soft" alternative to Ahmadinezhad, would gradually yield an easier approach to Middle East peace, thus softening the positions of Iran's regional strategic allies, Syria, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Hizballah in Lebanon. This in turn would have boosted Obama's multi-track approach for comprehensive peace in the region: the creation of an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, closing the Iraq file and attaining a peaceful resolution to Iran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear power.
It remains to be seen if the upheaval will be a turning point for Iran, destabilizing the revolutionary establishment enough in favor of moderation and pluralism to bring long-term stability at home and across the region, and if new, internationally supervised presidential elections would tip the balance in favor of Mousavi. Perhaps the ongoing bloody confrontations between the state security apparatus and pro-democracy protestors will fizzle out after the Guardian Council, the country's top legislative body, said earlier this week there were no signs of serious electoral fraud in the ballot despite conceding that in 50 cities more than 100 per cent of the electorate was officially recorded as turning out to vote.
In the latter case, the leadership that forcefully quelled street unrest after stealing a "rigged" election will continue to push its aggressive domestic and foreign agenda even if it is not recognized by much of the international community, as happened in some East European countries. A weakened regime, however, could become nervous and offensive to cover up for perceived weakness, instigating tension with Israel, which is unhappy with Obama's Middle East peace drive and would not mind derailing it. Such a crisis would force Washington to focus on Iran rather than the Arab-Israel conflict.
For now, Jordanian officials, politicians and security analysts agree that Iran's election has exposed deep divisions within Iran, which they welcome. The regime in Tehran now needs to consolidate its grip on power through compromise and consensus building. Nearly half of the Iranian population will continue to push for reform, including separating politics from religion. This could weaken the popular appeal of hardline Muslim parties challenging the region's despotic rulers, who remain concerned that their constituencies would follow the Iranian example and demand for reforms.
But when it comes to strategic foreign policy, there appears to be consensus between Ahmadinezhad and Mousavi on the need to continue developing Iran's nuclear program to ensure a greater say in a changing regional and global order. The difference between them would not go beyond tactics and tone, at least in the medium term.
"What is happening in Iran is the clearest indication that the revolution is aging, and rather fast because it failed to modernize itself over the past 30 years," said a senior Jordanian politician recently. "There are new dynamics in favor of modernization. But these dynamics are being exaggerated by most western media and the enemies of Ahmadinezhad".
Such exaggeration even touches on what Mousavi could achieve, whether he continues to lead the opposition or is elected under a new vote.
"Mousavi will push for steps to ensure political pluralism and economic reform, but he will not introduce drastic changes to reform the Islamic regime beyond recognition like Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika did to the USSR" in the late 1980s. "He has no choice but to keep building the Iranian empire, which is on the rise, while introducing gradual change," the senior official said.
"He will dismantle neither the Islamic state nor its nuclear program, and he will not reduce Iranian influence in the region by curbing Tehran's role in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. He needs to use all these cards to make Tehran's voice heard in the region and abroad."- Published 25/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is a journalist and former chief editor of the Jordan Times.
Regional political effects, inspiration to opposition forces
Riad KahwajiThe Arab world has been closely watching events unfold in Iran with a mixture of shock, interest and some anxiety. Most of the Arab media has directly or indirectly supported public demonstrations by opposition supporters in Iran. The media in general have portrayed the struggle in Iran as one between moderate forces that aspire to cancel the results of the elections, which they claim to be fraudulent, and the hard-line forces led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and asked Iranians to accept the results and quit the demonstrations.
For their part, Arab leaders and officials have opted to remain quiet and maintain that this is a domestic Iranian affair. In some cases, the media in the Arab world have adopted the perspective of the host government based on the latter's relations with Ahmadinezhad. Thus, while the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news channel has shown more sympathy toward the regime in Tehran, other media outlets in the Arab Gulf states like the Dubai-based and Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel have tilted toward the opposition camp led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However the conflict ends in Iran, the perceived image of the Islamic Republic has changed in the region. The mere fact that Iran's Supreme Leader is now openly challenged by prominent Iranian figures and a large section of the people has been a shock to many Arabs and an indication that Tehran could be on the verge of a major change of regime or change within the regime. Even if Ahmadinezhad holds onto power as a result of harsh measures taken by the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militias, the legitimacy of the Islamic regime has become questionable and its infallible divine image undermined. Iran's main allies, like Syria, Hizballah and Hamas, are most likely reconsidering the situation and readying themselves for the possibility of a major shift within the Iranian regime or even its collapse.
The high moral ground on which the Supreme Leader is placed by many Shi'ites in the Arab world has also likely been shaken by the recent events. This opens the way for prominent Shi'ite leaders who have disputed the welayat al-faqih theory and feel it has stripped them of their influence domestically. As for countries that were readying themselves to better engage Iran in political discussion, like Washington and its allies, they too will have to consider the new realities unveiled since election day.
Alongside these near-term consequences for Iran and its relations with the world, the Iranian uprising has also left a long-term impact on some states in the region. The Iranian riots must have grabbed the attention of active opposition movements in countries like Syria, Egypt and Bahrain. They have likely learned valuable lessons about the use of cyberspace in organizing and rallying support domestically and internationally. The age of internet-driven revolutions has reached the Middle East and will probably be around effectively for a while.
The most significant factor is the efficient use of new media technologies like the internet, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and cellular functions like SMS and Bluetooth in mobilizing the masses, communicating with the outside world and denying the government the capability to control the flow of information within as well as to and from the country. Although this was not the first time the new media technology was used in public demonstrations in the region, as was the case in recent incidents in Egypt, the Iranian experience has revealed new techniques that regional opposition forces could use in future anti-government actions.
One should expect to see future public rallies in authoritarian countries better covered internationally via these new technologies. Modern information, communication and media technologies have literally stripped remaining dictatorships of their monopoly on the flow of information and could eventually play a major role in their downfall.
Another cause of concern to some Arab observers is the possibility of the Iranian government heightening tensions in the Middle East region in order to divert attention from the domestic scene to the outside. Friction with the West would also serve the current strategy of blaming all the unrest on foreign intervention. The surprise announcement of military maneuvers by Iranian air force and navy units in the Gulf area was mostly seen as a way to shift both domestic and international public attention to the question of regional security. Rising threat perceptions in Tehran regarding the domestic as well as the regional scene could drive the regime to make hasty decisions or miscalculations that could conceivably spark a regional military confrontation.
Authoritarian regimes are most dangerous and adventurous when their survival is threatened and they feel they have little to lose. Hence caution is the word.
Riad Kahwaji is CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis - INEGMA, in Dubai.
Iran is in crisis; so is the Middle East
Gamal A. G. SoltanFor months, major regional and international actors were waiting for the conclusion of Iran's presidential elections. The prevalent feeling was that a new beginning in Middle East politics should follow those elections. US President Barack Obama's overture toward Iran was thought to be effective in bringing about changes in Iranian foreign policy. Even many of those who had doubts about the usefulness of Obama's initiative thought it should at least be tested before being discarded. Thus both believers and skeptics were looking forward to the conclusion of Iran's presidential election campaign so that Obama's Iran and Middle East policy could be assessed.
While interested parties were getting ready to deal with either a radical Iran under the renewed leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad or a moderate Iran under the leadership of one of the reformist candidates, it seems that now we have to deal with an unstable Iran, a scenario that was never seriously contemplated. While attempts to reconcile the Iranian political factions have not yet been abandoned, developments indicate that a break between the two main factions is the likely outcome of the current crisis. Coexistence between conservatives and reformists in Iran's politics is finally coming to an end. The Iranian regime that is likely to take shape in the aftermath of the current crisis will be a narrow-based conservative regime. Reformists are likely to be turned into a permanent opposition in Iranian politics that seeks the transformation rather than the reform of the regime of the Islamic Republic.
The image of the Iranian regime has been badly hurt as a result of the events that have unfolded since the beginning of the electoral campaign. In particular, the ten days that followed election day have deeply undermined Iran's stature and reputation. The portrayal of Iran as the country that was able to reconcile the prolonged conflict between Islam and democracy was among the most effective assets employed by Iranian elites to mobilize support for the Islamic Republic among Muslims all over the world. The current crisis in Iran indicates that the time for a divorce between the Islamic and the republican elements of the Iranian model has arrived.
Electoral fraud and brutal suppression of protesters are undermining Iran's image among Muslims in the Middle East and beyond. The Iranian regime can no longer claim the legitimacy and integrity it professed for decades. Erosion of the legitimacy of Iran's model of Islamic republic will now definitely affect the balance of power between moderates and radicals in the Middle East--and not in favor of the latter.
The balance of power among the Muslim countries of the Middle East is more about soft than hard power. "Balance of legitimacy" might be a more useful term to explain Middle East politics. Undermining the legitimacy of the Iranian regime denies Iran a significant part of the mobilizing force it used to enjoy all over the Middle East. It limits Iran's ability to inspire and manipulate masses in the Middle East and beyond.
Iranian politics is entering a new era characterized by a shattered national consensus, a limited regime support base and full control by extreme religious conservative forces. Dealing with Iran in this new era is like walking uncharted terrain. During the months, maybe years to come, the Iranian ruling elite will be more concerned than ever about self legitimization and regime consolidation. The irony of the current situation is that a shaky Iranian regime could be a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Foreign adventures could be the strategy of Iran's ruling elite to reestablish its grip on power at home. It could be useful in the uncertainty of the current days to revisit the 30 year-old tragedy of the American hostages in Tehran for lessons learned.
Hitherto, the combination of an Islamic Republic at home and a defiant power abroad has proved to be extremely effective in the consolidation of Iran's regional influence. Losing a significant part of legitimacy at home is likely to reorient the attention of Iran's ruling elite outward. Emphasizing Iran's image as the leading defiant power in the Middle East is likely to be Iran's strategy in response to the current crisis. Operationalizing such a strategy could entail an escalation of violence and instability in the region. Proxy conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza during the past three years proved instrumental for the consolidation of Iran's regional influence. Escalation on either or both fronts is likely in the aftermath of Iran's presidential elections.
The current crisis in Iran has brought to an end a short-lived relaxation in Iranian-western relations. The recent tension between Iran and the western powers, including the US, renders the long-awaited rapprochement between the two sides unlikely, at least in the short run. Dialogue with Iran has become a costly option for President Obama as well as for other western leaders. The US now needs to come up with new alternatives to Obama's policy of engaging Iran.
Gamal A. G. Soltan is a senior research fellow in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a visiting professor of political science at The American University in Cairo.
The events in Iran: Arab reactions • The dilemma of Arab nationalists - Rime Allaf
Iran's problem is everyone's problem in so many ways. • Amman maintains calculated stance - Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
Jordanian officials, politicians and security analysts agree that Iran's election has exposed deep divisions within Iran, which they welcome. • Regional political effects, inspiration to opposition forces - Riad Kahwaji
The Iranian riots must have grabbed the attention of active opposition forces in Syria, Egypt and Bahrain. • Iran is in crisis; so is the Middle East - Gamal A. G. Soltan
Escalation on the Lebanon and/or Gaza front is likely.
The dilemma of Arab nationalists
Rime Allaf
While the entire word is gripped with the political turmoil in Iran, its closest neighbors have been collectively pretending not to notice there really is a problem at all. At first unable to contain their enthusiasm with the opposition to a regime they've collectively hated for 30 years, various official media outlets have mellowed their tone and practically reverted to the "domestic Iranian matter" line.
And yet Iran's problem is everyone's problem in so many ways. Since the advent of the Islamic Republic in a revolution that swept the Shah from power, most Arab countries have at best been uneasy neighbors to Iran, and at worst aggressors. The Iranians had barely begun to come to terms with the fact of having dismissed the Shah when the proxy wars against them began in earnest.
Fighting the dirty war of the bloc of superpowers arming him, Saddam Hussein attacked Iran and bled both countries dry for eight years, especially once the full impact of the US's dual containment policy was felt. No wonder the Iranians didn't warm to their neighborhood. Apart from Syria, which particularly enjoyed the fall of one of Israel's greatest allies and was united with Iran in a common hatred of Saddam Hussein, Arab countries were predominantly hostile.
Arab wariness stemmed less from the fact of the Iranian revolution than the banner under which it was fought. That the powerful, well-armed and internationally supported Shah could fall so easily was one thing: that the revolutionaries did it in the name of Islam was another. For the first time in centuries, two rival blocs faced off to claim leadership of a huge global Muslim community. Both also sat on large oil resources that helped finance their new activism, supporting numerous groups with political and religious agendas. These confronting alignments have now endured for decades, creating a complex set of relations, that it is crucial to understand as an introduction to the way forward, when some Arabs are now more pro-Iranian regime than before, in direct opposition to the critics siding with the "moderate" group.
The mutual animosity between the competing Iranian and Arab regimes, seeping through their respective media outlets, has been evident for years, especially since the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, the animosity has filtered down to the popular level, fuelled by inflammatory rhetoric (mostly from the anti-Iranian side) and turning anti-Iranian positions into anti-Shi'ite ones, exacerbated by Iraq and Lebanon and the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict or, more correctly, the Palestinian cause.
There is no doubt that Israel plays a role in this divide, being in fact the lowest common denominator. With the Iranian regime (alongside Syria) openly supporting the so-called radical elements of the Palestinian resistance, and with Saudi Arabia having sided with the so-called moderate Palestinian Authority, Arabs actively opposing Israel have made their choice. The situation is even more pronounced in Lebanon, where the resistance to Israel is the sole domain of Hizballah, a militant group whose umbilical tie to Iran seems to trump most other considerations.
Today, tens of thousands of Iranians are protesting against their regime, officially because of a dubious election which even authorities admit had irregularities, and unofficially because many of them are vying for a relaxation of the strict rules that govern their lives. Importantly, many have expressed their specific distaste for Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's needlessly confrontational stances, his foreign policy and his absurd habit of putting into doubt the history of the Holocaust--all of which has only made their isolation more pronounced.
For many Iranians, popular Arab support for Ahmadinezhad remains unpalatable and unforgivable. It makes little sense to them that people who support freedom and self-determination for one people (the Palestinians, for instance) would also support a leader whose domestic rule has been controversial to say the least. Increasingly, young Iranians are expressing anti-Arab sentiments based mostly on their regime's support of Hizballah (and to a lesser extent Hamas).
Arab nationalists, and Arab liberals to a certain extent, have a serious problem. With the noble causes they espouse, they should technically be equally critical of such regimes. And yet, because of the Iranian regime's staunch support for Palestinian groups and for the Palestinian cause in general, many Arabs have spared Ahmadinezhad and his regime from the stinging reproaches they extend to other rulers.
Is the enemy of our enemy necessarily our friend, regardless of other factors? Have we become so desperate for support for the Palestinian cause that we would become bedfellows with the least savory of characters? This is not the first time this would have happened. Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who oppressed his own people for decades, acted so magnanimously with Palestinians that Yasser Arafat chose to side with Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, with disastrous consequences for Palestinians. Likewise, the farcical Muammar Qadhafi remained a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause while his own people suffered. Many critics of Arab regimes also fall silent on Syria, precisely because of its vocal support for the various militant groups.
Arab nationalists have often explained themselves on this thorny issue, arguing that the choice of allies was dictated by the magnitude of the Palestinian problem and all the issues still touching on Israel. Unfortunately, this position has created huge resentment from the people ruled by the likes of Saddam Hussein, and anti-Palestinian sentiment was common for a long time. Similarly, the antics of Ahmadinezhad have been completely counterproductive, detrimental to the Palestinian cause and resented by many Iranians.
There must come a point when supporters of freedom for Palestinians, under a brutal military occupation and living in much worse conditions than most people, must take the same stand for others, even if the latter live in relatively milder conditions. Until then, we must not be surprised when Iranians, like Iraqis before them, stop caring about fundamental causes, no matter how righteous.- Published 25/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rime Allaf is an associate fellow at Chatham House, London.
Amman maintains calculated stance
Rana Sabbagh-GargourTwo weeks into Iran's post-election intifada, official Jordan is maintaining a low profile to make sure Amman stands on the right side of history. In a situation so delicate, King Abdullah II, who has long viewed Iran as a main source of instability in the region, prefers to keep Jordan out of the momentous internal Iranian drama that has been unfolding since the June 12 vote.
Taking its cue from the United States, its key western ally, Amman will not acknowledge the results of the heavily contested vote, which brought back hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad. But unlike Washington, Amman is also not ready to condemn the heavy security crackdown on pro-reform supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is challenging the election result.
For now, Jordan's calculated position is sparing the government criticism from the influential Islamic-led opposition, which says it backs "Ahmadinezhad's Iran". The opposition feels indebted to him mostly because he backs its Palestinian ally, Hamas, now controlling the Gaza Strip and challenging the legitimacy of the Jordanian-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Political ties between Amman and Tehran have ebbed and flowed since Jordan sided with Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran. Amman has often accused Tehran of attempts to destabilize the kingdom by supporting militant groups to sabotage Amman's 1994 peace treaty with Israel or inciting hatred against the regime.
Iranian leaders, meanwhile, have not forgiven the king for warning, shortly before the start of the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, that the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-controlled regime would give rise to an Iranian-led "Shi'ite crescent" sphere of influence, stretching from Iran to Iraq, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Jordanian officials, like representatives of the relatively moderate, pro-western governments in Ramallah, Cairo, Beirut, Riyadh and elsewhere, fear any overtures of support to Mousavi might undermine the very forces they and the US would like to see strengthened. In private, however, they say they would have liked to see him replace Ahmadinezhad, who will have difficulty engaging with President Obama or changing his childish political rhetoric that appeals to the lowest common denominator on the Arab street.
Jordanian media, like many politicians, remain divided over the intentions of Mr. Mousavi, a former prime minister, and the powerful counter-elite behind him. Journalists are asking if it is better to reform the system or overthrow it. Many in Jordan had hoped that a weakened, if not changed, regime led by Mousavi, the "soft" alternative to Ahmadinezhad, would gradually yield an easier approach to Middle East peace, thus softening the positions of Iran's regional strategic allies, Syria, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Hizballah in Lebanon. This in turn would have boosted Obama's multi-track approach for comprehensive peace in the region: the creation of an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, closing the Iraq file and attaining a peaceful resolution to Iran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear power.
It remains to be seen if the upheaval will be a turning point for Iran, destabilizing the revolutionary establishment enough in favor of moderation and pluralism to bring long-term stability at home and across the region, and if new, internationally supervised presidential elections would tip the balance in favor of Mousavi. Perhaps the ongoing bloody confrontations between the state security apparatus and pro-democracy protestors will fizzle out after the Guardian Council, the country's top legislative body, said earlier this week there were no signs of serious electoral fraud in the ballot despite conceding that in 50 cities more than 100 per cent of the electorate was officially recorded as turning out to vote.
In the latter case, the leadership that forcefully quelled street unrest after stealing a "rigged" election will continue to push its aggressive domestic and foreign agenda even if it is not recognized by much of the international community, as happened in some East European countries. A weakened regime, however, could become nervous and offensive to cover up for perceived weakness, instigating tension with Israel, which is unhappy with Obama's Middle East peace drive and would not mind derailing it. Such a crisis would force Washington to focus on Iran rather than the Arab-Israel conflict.
For now, Jordanian officials, politicians and security analysts agree that Iran's election has exposed deep divisions within Iran, which they welcome. The regime in Tehran now needs to consolidate its grip on power through compromise and consensus building. Nearly half of the Iranian population will continue to push for reform, including separating politics from religion. This could weaken the popular appeal of hardline Muslim parties challenging the region's despotic rulers, who remain concerned that their constituencies would follow the Iranian example and demand for reforms.
But when it comes to strategic foreign policy, there appears to be consensus between Ahmadinezhad and Mousavi on the need to continue developing Iran's nuclear program to ensure a greater say in a changing regional and global order. The difference between them would not go beyond tactics and tone, at least in the medium term.
"What is happening in Iran is the clearest indication that the revolution is aging, and rather fast because it failed to modernize itself over the past 30 years," said a senior Jordanian politician recently. "There are new dynamics in favor of modernization. But these dynamics are being exaggerated by most western media and the enemies of Ahmadinezhad".
Such exaggeration even touches on what Mousavi could achieve, whether he continues to lead the opposition or is elected under a new vote.
"Mousavi will push for steps to ensure political pluralism and economic reform, but he will not introduce drastic changes to reform the Islamic regime beyond recognition like Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika did to the USSR" in the late 1980s. "He has no choice but to keep building the Iranian empire, which is on the rise, while introducing gradual change," the senior official said.
"He will dismantle neither the Islamic state nor its nuclear program, and he will not reduce Iranian influence in the region by curbing Tehran's role in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. He needs to use all these cards to make Tehran's voice heard in the region and abroad."- Published 25/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is a journalist and former chief editor of the Jordan Times.
Regional political effects, inspiration to opposition forces
Riad KahwajiThe Arab world has been closely watching events unfold in Iran with a mixture of shock, interest and some anxiety. Most of the Arab media has directly or indirectly supported public demonstrations by opposition supporters in Iran. The media in general have portrayed the struggle in Iran as one between moderate forces that aspire to cancel the results of the elections, which they claim to be fraudulent, and the hard-line forces led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and asked Iranians to accept the results and quit the demonstrations.
For their part, Arab leaders and officials have opted to remain quiet and maintain that this is a domestic Iranian affair. In some cases, the media in the Arab world have adopted the perspective of the host government based on the latter's relations with Ahmadinezhad. Thus, while the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news channel has shown more sympathy toward the regime in Tehran, other media outlets in the Arab Gulf states like the Dubai-based and Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel have tilted toward the opposition camp led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However the conflict ends in Iran, the perceived image of the Islamic Republic has changed in the region. The mere fact that Iran's Supreme Leader is now openly challenged by prominent Iranian figures and a large section of the people has been a shock to many Arabs and an indication that Tehran could be on the verge of a major change of regime or change within the regime. Even if Ahmadinezhad holds onto power as a result of harsh measures taken by the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militias, the legitimacy of the Islamic regime has become questionable and its infallible divine image undermined. Iran's main allies, like Syria, Hizballah and Hamas, are most likely reconsidering the situation and readying themselves for the possibility of a major shift within the Iranian regime or even its collapse.
The high moral ground on which the Supreme Leader is placed by many Shi'ites in the Arab world has also likely been shaken by the recent events. This opens the way for prominent Shi'ite leaders who have disputed the welayat al-faqih theory and feel it has stripped them of their influence domestically. As for countries that were readying themselves to better engage Iran in political discussion, like Washington and its allies, they too will have to consider the new realities unveiled since election day.
Alongside these near-term consequences for Iran and its relations with the world, the Iranian uprising has also left a long-term impact on some states in the region. The Iranian riots must have grabbed the attention of active opposition movements in countries like Syria, Egypt and Bahrain. They have likely learned valuable lessons about the use of cyberspace in organizing and rallying support domestically and internationally. The age of internet-driven revolutions has reached the Middle East and will probably be around effectively for a while.
The most significant factor is the efficient use of new media technologies like the internet, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and cellular functions like SMS and Bluetooth in mobilizing the masses, communicating with the outside world and denying the government the capability to control the flow of information within as well as to and from the country. Although this was not the first time the new media technology was used in public demonstrations in the region, as was the case in recent incidents in Egypt, the Iranian experience has revealed new techniques that regional opposition forces could use in future anti-government actions.
One should expect to see future public rallies in authoritarian countries better covered internationally via these new technologies. Modern information, communication and media technologies have literally stripped remaining dictatorships of their monopoly on the flow of information and could eventually play a major role in their downfall.
Another cause of concern to some Arab observers is the possibility of the Iranian government heightening tensions in the Middle East region in order to divert attention from the domestic scene to the outside. Friction with the West would also serve the current strategy of blaming all the unrest on foreign intervention. The surprise announcement of military maneuvers by Iranian air force and navy units in the Gulf area was mostly seen as a way to shift both domestic and international public attention to the question of regional security. Rising threat perceptions in Tehran regarding the domestic as well as the regional scene could drive the regime to make hasty decisions or miscalculations that could conceivably spark a regional military confrontation.
Authoritarian regimes are most dangerous and adventurous when their survival is threatened and they feel they have little to lose. Hence caution is the word.
Riad Kahwaji is CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis - INEGMA, in Dubai.
Iran is in crisis; so is the Middle East
Gamal A. G. SoltanFor months, major regional and international actors were waiting for the conclusion of Iran's presidential elections. The prevalent feeling was that a new beginning in Middle East politics should follow those elections. US President Barack Obama's overture toward Iran was thought to be effective in bringing about changes in Iranian foreign policy. Even many of those who had doubts about the usefulness of Obama's initiative thought it should at least be tested before being discarded. Thus both believers and skeptics were looking forward to the conclusion of Iran's presidential election campaign so that Obama's Iran and Middle East policy could be assessed.
While interested parties were getting ready to deal with either a radical Iran under the renewed leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad or a moderate Iran under the leadership of one of the reformist candidates, it seems that now we have to deal with an unstable Iran, a scenario that was never seriously contemplated. While attempts to reconcile the Iranian political factions have not yet been abandoned, developments indicate that a break between the two main factions is the likely outcome of the current crisis. Coexistence between conservatives and reformists in Iran's politics is finally coming to an end. The Iranian regime that is likely to take shape in the aftermath of the current crisis will be a narrow-based conservative regime. Reformists are likely to be turned into a permanent opposition in Iranian politics that seeks the transformation rather than the reform of the regime of the Islamic Republic.
The image of the Iranian regime has been badly hurt as a result of the events that have unfolded since the beginning of the electoral campaign. In particular, the ten days that followed election day have deeply undermined Iran's stature and reputation. The portrayal of Iran as the country that was able to reconcile the prolonged conflict between Islam and democracy was among the most effective assets employed by Iranian elites to mobilize support for the Islamic Republic among Muslims all over the world. The current crisis in Iran indicates that the time for a divorce between the Islamic and the republican elements of the Iranian model has arrived.
Electoral fraud and brutal suppression of protesters are undermining Iran's image among Muslims in the Middle East and beyond. The Iranian regime can no longer claim the legitimacy and integrity it professed for decades. Erosion of the legitimacy of Iran's model of Islamic republic will now definitely affect the balance of power between moderates and radicals in the Middle East--and not in favor of the latter.
The balance of power among the Muslim countries of the Middle East is more about soft than hard power. "Balance of legitimacy" might be a more useful term to explain Middle East politics. Undermining the legitimacy of the Iranian regime denies Iran a significant part of the mobilizing force it used to enjoy all over the Middle East. It limits Iran's ability to inspire and manipulate masses in the Middle East and beyond.
Iranian politics is entering a new era characterized by a shattered national consensus, a limited regime support base and full control by extreme religious conservative forces. Dealing with Iran in this new era is like walking uncharted terrain. During the months, maybe years to come, the Iranian ruling elite will be more concerned than ever about self legitimization and regime consolidation. The irony of the current situation is that a shaky Iranian regime could be a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Foreign adventures could be the strategy of Iran's ruling elite to reestablish its grip on power at home. It could be useful in the uncertainty of the current days to revisit the 30 year-old tragedy of the American hostages in Tehran for lessons learned.
Hitherto, the combination of an Islamic Republic at home and a defiant power abroad has proved to be extremely effective in the consolidation of Iran's regional influence. Losing a significant part of legitimacy at home is likely to reorient the attention of Iran's ruling elite outward. Emphasizing Iran's image as the leading defiant power in the Middle East is likely to be Iran's strategy in response to the current crisis. Operationalizing such a strategy could entail an escalation of violence and instability in the region. Proxy conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza during the past three years proved instrumental for the consolidation of Iran's regional influence. Escalation on either or both fronts is likely in the aftermath of Iran's presidential elections.
The current crisis in Iran has brought to an end a short-lived relaxation in Iranian-western relations. The recent tension between Iran and the western powers, including the US, renders the long-awaited rapprochement between the two sides unlikely, at least in the short run. Dialogue with Iran has become a costly option for President Obama as well as for other western leaders. The US now needs to come up with new alternatives to Obama's policy of engaging Iran.
Gamal A. G. Soltan is a senior research fellow in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and a visiting professor of political science at The American University in Cairo.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Deparment Without a Cause The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross By ROBERT ALVAREZ
Deparment Without a Cause
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross
By ROBERT ALVAREZ
Last month, the Obama administration rolled out the details of the Department of Energy's (DOE) budget for fiscal year 2010. "The president's budget for energy reflects his commitment to ending our dependence on foreign oil, restoring our scientific leadership and putting Americans back to work through investments in a new green energy economy," DOE Secretary Steven Chu said.
This pledge to transform our energy future will not likely be fulfilled if it's based on the DOE's current budget request. A lot depends on economic stimulus money, which runs out next year. Unless a major restructuring occurs, this won't be enough. Even with stimulus funding, though, DOE's actual energy functions continue to take a backseat to propping up the nation's large and antiquated nuclear infrastructure. Despite the president's rhetoric about reshaping America's energy future, the DOE budget for FY 2010, minus stimulus spending, looks a lot like that of George W. Bush and several presidents before him.
For instance, nearly two-thirds of the budget will support the government's nuclear weapons complex. Only 18.5% of spending will go to actual energy activities. Of that portion, nuclear power gets more than a third, which flows primarily to DOE sites, followed by coal at 20% and conservation at 16%. DOE proposes to spend ten times more on nuclear weapons that on saving energy.
In other words, the nuclear complex remains the biggest obstacle between us and the new energy economy that we've been promised.
Department Without a Cause
Created in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to set America's energy agenda in response to oil disruptions, the DOE has remained on the sidelines while the nation's energy and environmental problems have worsened. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, one of his first goals was to abolish the DOE and eliminate the government's role in the energy sector. The department, however, survived. Reagan and his supporters simply couldn't figure out what to do with the county's sprawling nuclear weapons complex, a dominant element of Energy's mandate since its creation.
By the late 1980s, with the Cold War in its final stage, the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex collapsed in the wake of scandalous revelations of about its massive environmental problems. Since the Reagan presidency, the policy of "least interference" in private enterprise, shared by the Republicans and Democrats alike, further disconnected DOE from energy markets.
But this all changed with the economic stimulus package enacted by Congress in late February. For the first time in 30 years, DOE is suddenly being pressed into service to help rescue the economy and restructure America's priorities.
Stimulating DOE
Four months into its term, the Obama administration is asking DOE to spend $38.7 billion for the next two years to reduce energy use, cleanup DOE sites, increase renewable energy sources, develop carbon capture technologies, help spawn electric vehicles, modernize the electrical grid, and advance energy research and development. It's a huge agenda.
The lion's share of the stimulus package funds goes to conservation. Energy conservation gets $11.6 billion of the pie, followed by $4.5 billion for electric transmission, $3.4 billion for fossil energy, and $2 billion for advanced battery manufacturing. An additional $6 billion is set aside to cover government costs for $60 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy and electric grid improvements. Stimulus funds will be added to the annual budgets for DOE for fiscal years 2009 and 2010.
Also, public power utilities supplying 19 western states, including the Bonneville Power and Western Marketing Administrations (BPA), will receive $3.35 billion in loan authority — with an eye toward beefing up electrical grids for wind and solar generation. BPA is already starting on a 500-kilovolt transmission line to carry 700 megawatts of new wind power capacity in the northwest.
The role of the federal government in the energy market place is no more apparent that in the DOE's loan guarantee programs. This year, DOE will provide $130 billion in federal loan guarantees to aid the ailing auto industry and help finance nuclear, coal, and renewable energy projects. It's also tasked to restructure and modernize the nation's electric grid system.
DOE's Environmental Mess
The stimulus package also includes $6 billion to cleanup DOE weapons sites. According to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), one of the provision's authors, this additional spending is needed "to reduce the size of the sites." The cleanup of DOE sites will take decades, not including the many centuries of institutional controls for the most severely contaminated areas, and is estimated at around $330 billion.
Reducing a nuclear footprint larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined is no small feat. DOE's 579 square-mile Hanford facility in Murray's home state of Washington, one of the most polluted sites in the Western Hemisphere, poses perhaps the largest challenge to downsizing. Last year Hanford received $2 billion for cleanup, nearly twice as much as the entire EPA Superfund cleanup program. But this is proving to be not enough and has prompted Washington State to sue DOE, not over downsizing but because of the slow pace of processing radioactive detritus that threatens the Columbia River.
DOE has a decades-long history of failed nuclear projects and cost overruns. Since 1990, Energy remains prominent on the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) list of federal "high-risk" agencies vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. In 2007, the GAO reported that "DOE performed little or no review" of billions of dollars in contractor monthly invoices over a two-year period for construction of a large waste-processing plant at DOE's Hanford site (which is at the center of the lawsuit filed by Washington State). The cost of this project has sky-rocketed to nearly $70 billion and is several years behind schedule.
The Trouble with Nukes
Even in wake of the decisions by the Congress and the Obama administration to eliminate spending for new weapons, the weapons complex is still spending at rates comparable to that during the height of the nuclear arms race in the 1950s.
The single largest expenditure in DOE's FY 2010 budget is to maintain some 9,200 intact nuclear warheads and thousands of weapons parts ($6.4 billion). During the Bush years, warhead dismantlement dwindled to the lowest number since the 1950s. As a result there is currently a 15-year backlog of some 4,200 retired nuclear warheads awaiting dismantlement. Thousands more will be added if President Obama follows through on his pledge to cut nuclear arms. Yet, according to DOE's budget, funding for weapons dismantlement is expected to drop by 50% over the next five years. Elimination of nuclear weapons continues to have a low priority in the DOE budget.
Adding to this burden is President Obama's goal to reduce global stockpiles of nuclear weapons, which will require some basic and difficult changes. Since the early 1990s, when the last major downsizing of the DOE weapons complex took place, the Republican-controlled Congress along with weapons bureaucrats successfully resisted establishing an infrastructure to carry out elimination of nuclear weapons. Instead, billion of dollars poured into the weapons labs and moribund weapons production sites in order to keep the hope alive of resuming production of new weapons.
When stimulus money runs out at the end of FY 2010, the Energy's department's nuclear weapons mandate will continue to place budgetary handcuffs on the Obama administration (unless another stimulus package in enacted).
This structural impediment isn't lost on the White House, which launched an interagency review in late January with the goal of transferring DOE's nuclear weapons program to the Pentagon possibly as early as FY 2010. Although I have advocated such a transfer, and The New York Times subsequently endorsed the move, the New Mexico congressional delegation has hotly opposed the idea. At stake is the state's status and the huge amount of funding that supports the weapons labs that dominate its economy. In response to the outcry from the weapons labs and their supporters, Secretary Chu has offered public reassurances that this won't happen.
DOE faces a brave new world in which, for the first time, it is being called on to employ millions of Americans to create a new energy future for the United States. Because of decades of neglect, the department is not equipped to meet this challenge. Will the Obama administration fundamentally restructure DOE and jettison its nuclear weapons millstone? We'll know the answer after stimulus funds run out next year.
Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at IPS, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies.
This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.
http://www.counterpunch.org/alvarez06242009.html
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross
By ROBERT ALVAREZ
Last month, the Obama administration rolled out the details of the Department of Energy's (DOE) budget for fiscal year 2010. "The president's budget for energy reflects his commitment to ending our dependence on foreign oil, restoring our scientific leadership and putting Americans back to work through investments in a new green energy economy," DOE Secretary Steven Chu said.
This pledge to transform our energy future will not likely be fulfilled if it's based on the DOE's current budget request. A lot depends on economic stimulus money, which runs out next year. Unless a major restructuring occurs, this won't be enough. Even with stimulus funding, though, DOE's actual energy functions continue to take a backseat to propping up the nation's large and antiquated nuclear infrastructure. Despite the president's rhetoric about reshaping America's energy future, the DOE budget for FY 2010, minus stimulus spending, looks a lot like that of George W. Bush and several presidents before him.
For instance, nearly two-thirds of the budget will support the government's nuclear weapons complex. Only 18.5% of spending will go to actual energy activities. Of that portion, nuclear power gets more than a third, which flows primarily to DOE sites, followed by coal at 20% and conservation at 16%. DOE proposes to spend ten times more on nuclear weapons that on saving energy.
In other words, the nuclear complex remains the biggest obstacle between us and the new energy economy that we've been promised.
Department Without a Cause
Created in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to set America's energy agenda in response to oil disruptions, the DOE has remained on the sidelines while the nation's energy and environmental problems have worsened. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, one of his first goals was to abolish the DOE and eliminate the government's role in the energy sector. The department, however, survived. Reagan and his supporters simply couldn't figure out what to do with the county's sprawling nuclear weapons complex, a dominant element of Energy's mandate since its creation.
By the late 1980s, with the Cold War in its final stage, the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex collapsed in the wake of scandalous revelations of about its massive environmental problems. Since the Reagan presidency, the policy of "least interference" in private enterprise, shared by the Republicans and Democrats alike, further disconnected DOE from energy markets.
But this all changed with the economic stimulus package enacted by Congress in late February. For the first time in 30 years, DOE is suddenly being pressed into service to help rescue the economy and restructure America's priorities.
Stimulating DOE
Four months into its term, the Obama administration is asking DOE to spend $38.7 billion for the next two years to reduce energy use, cleanup DOE sites, increase renewable energy sources, develop carbon capture technologies, help spawn electric vehicles, modernize the electrical grid, and advance energy research and development. It's a huge agenda.
The lion's share of the stimulus package funds goes to conservation. Energy conservation gets $11.6 billion of the pie, followed by $4.5 billion for electric transmission, $3.4 billion for fossil energy, and $2 billion for advanced battery manufacturing. An additional $6 billion is set aside to cover government costs for $60 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy and electric grid improvements. Stimulus funds will be added to the annual budgets for DOE for fiscal years 2009 and 2010.
Also, public power utilities supplying 19 western states, including the Bonneville Power and Western Marketing Administrations (BPA), will receive $3.35 billion in loan authority — with an eye toward beefing up electrical grids for wind and solar generation. BPA is already starting on a 500-kilovolt transmission line to carry 700 megawatts of new wind power capacity in the northwest.
The role of the federal government in the energy market place is no more apparent that in the DOE's loan guarantee programs. This year, DOE will provide $130 billion in federal loan guarantees to aid the ailing auto industry and help finance nuclear, coal, and renewable energy projects. It's also tasked to restructure and modernize the nation's electric grid system.
DOE's Environmental Mess
The stimulus package also includes $6 billion to cleanup DOE weapons sites. According to Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), one of the provision's authors, this additional spending is needed "to reduce the size of the sites." The cleanup of DOE sites will take decades, not including the many centuries of institutional controls for the most severely contaminated areas, and is estimated at around $330 billion.
Reducing a nuclear footprint larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined is no small feat. DOE's 579 square-mile Hanford facility in Murray's home state of Washington, one of the most polluted sites in the Western Hemisphere, poses perhaps the largest challenge to downsizing. Last year Hanford received $2 billion for cleanup, nearly twice as much as the entire EPA Superfund cleanup program. But this is proving to be not enough and has prompted Washington State to sue DOE, not over downsizing but because of the slow pace of processing radioactive detritus that threatens the Columbia River.
DOE has a decades-long history of failed nuclear projects and cost overruns. Since 1990, Energy remains prominent on the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) list of federal "high-risk" agencies vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. In 2007, the GAO reported that "DOE performed little or no review" of billions of dollars in contractor monthly invoices over a two-year period for construction of a large waste-processing plant at DOE's Hanford site (which is at the center of the lawsuit filed by Washington State). The cost of this project has sky-rocketed to nearly $70 billion and is several years behind schedule.
The Trouble with Nukes
Even in wake of the decisions by the Congress and the Obama administration to eliminate spending for new weapons, the weapons complex is still spending at rates comparable to that during the height of the nuclear arms race in the 1950s.
The single largest expenditure in DOE's FY 2010 budget is to maintain some 9,200 intact nuclear warheads and thousands of weapons parts ($6.4 billion). During the Bush years, warhead dismantlement dwindled to the lowest number since the 1950s. As a result there is currently a 15-year backlog of some 4,200 retired nuclear warheads awaiting dismantlement. Thousands more will be added if President Obama follows through on his pledge to cut nuclear arms. Yet, according to DOE's budget, funding for weapons dismantlement is expected to drop by 50% over the next five years. Elimination of nuclear weapons continues to have a low priority in the DOE budget.
Adding to this burden is President Obama's goal to reduce global stockpiles of nuclear weapons, which will require some basic and difficult changes. Since the early 1990s, when the last major downsizing of the DOE weapons complex took place, the Republican-controlled Congress along with weapons bureaucrats successfully resisted establishing an infrastructure to carry out elimination of nuclear weapons. Instead, billion of dollars poured into the weapons labs and moribund weapons production sites in order to keep the hope alive of resuming production of new weapons.
When stimulus money runs out at the end of FY 2010, the Energy's department's nuclear weapons mandate will continue to place budgetary handcuffs on the Obama administration (unless another stimulus package in enacted).
This structural impediment isn't lost on the White House, which launched an interagency review in late January with the goal of transferring DOE's nuclear weapons program to the Pentagon possibly as early as FY 2010. Although I have advocated such a transfer, and The New York Times subsequently endorsed the move, the New Mexico congressional delegation has hotly opposed the idea. At stake is the state's status and the huge amount of funding that supports the weapons labs that dominate its economy. In response to the outcry from the weapons labs and their supporters, Secretary Chu has offered public reassurances that this won't happen.
DOE faces a brave new world in which, for the first time, it is being called on to employ millions of Americans to create a new energy future for the United States. Because of decades of neglect, the department is not equipped to meet this challenge. Will the Obama administration fundamentally restructure DOE and jettison its nuclear weapons millstone? We'll know the answer after stimulus funds run out next year.
Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at IPS, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies.
This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.
http://www.counterpunch.org/alvarez06242009.html
The Obama Adminstration is Helping to Upgrade Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One By
A CounterPunch Exclusive Report
The Obama Adminstration is Helping to Upgrade Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One
By ANDREW COCKBURN
"If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen,” Hillary Clinton recently told Fox News, “and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by Al Qaeda and other extremists were to essentially topple the government … then they would have keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan.” Many will note that the extremists posing this unthinkable prospect were set up in business by the U.S. in the first place. Very well buried is the fact that the nuclear arsenal that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of our former allies has been itself the object of U.S. encouragement over the years and is to this very day in receipt of crucial U.S. financial assistance and technical support.
Back in 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, intent on his own jihad against the USSR, declared that the “Afghan resistance” should be supplied with money and arms. That, of course, required full Pakistani cooperation, which would, Brzezinski underlined, “require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.” In other words, Pakistan was free to get on with building a bomb so long as we could arm the people who have subsequently come back to haunt us. Asked for his views on Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, Ronald Reagan replied “I just don’t think it’s any of our business.” During the years that the infamous A.Q. Khan was peddling his uranium enrichment technology around the place, his shipping manager was a CIA agent, whose masters seem to have had little problem with allowing the trade to go forward.
Now comes word from inside the Obama government that little has changed. “Most of the aid we’ve sent them over the past few years has been diverted into their nuclear program,” a senior national security official in the current administration recently told me. Most of this diverted aid -- $5.56 billion as of a year ago – was officially designated “Coalition Support Funds” for Pakistani military operations against the Taliban. It may be that this diversion came as a terrible shock to Washington, but the money has been routinely handed over essentially without accounting being required from the Pakistanis. The GAO has huffed at items such as the $30 million shelled out for non-existent roads, of the $1.5 million for “naval vehicles damaged in combat” but that was as far as public complaints went. In the meantime, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen confirmed recently, the Pakistanis have been urgently increasing their nuclear weapons production.
A former national security official with knowledge of the policy explained this insouciance to me. “We want to get in there and manage [their nuclear program]. If we manage it, we can make sure they don’t start testing, or start a war.” In other words, the U.S. is helping the Pakistanis to modernize their nuclear arsenal in hopes that the U.S. will thereby gain a measure of control. The official aim of U.S. technical support, at an estimated cost of $100 million a year, is to render the Pakistani weapons safer, i.e., less likely to go off if dropped, and more “secure”, meaning out of the reach of our old friends the extremists.
However, in pursuit of this objective, it is inevitable that the U.S. is not only rendering the warheads more operationally reliable, we are also transferring the technology required to design more sophisticated warheads without having to test them, a system known as “stockpile stewardship.”
Conceived after the U.S. forswore live testing in 1993 as a means to “test” weapons through computer simulations, this vastly expensive program not only ensures the weapons’ reliability (at least in theory) but also the viability of new and improved designs. In reality, the stewardship program has been as much a boondoggle for the politically powerful nuclear laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos as anything else, so outreach in the form of assistance to the Pakistanis in this area can only gratify our own weaponeers.
“If you’re not confident that weapons are safe to handle, you’re more likely to keep them in the basement,” says nuclear command and control expert Bruce Blair, President of the World Security Institute. “The military is always pressuring to deploy the weapons, which requires an increase in readiness.” In 2008 Blair himself was approached by the Pakistani military seeking advice on means to render their weapons more secure. Their aim, he says, was clearly to render their nuclear force “mature,” and “operational.” In the same way, says Blair, a few years ago an Indian military delegation turned up at the Russian Impulse Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, to ask for help on making their weapons safer to handle. “They said they wanted to be able to assure their political leadership that their weapons were safe enough to be deployed.”
Pakistan’s drive to build more nukes is an inevitable by-product of the 2008 nuclear cooperation deal with India that overturned U.S. law and gave the Indians access to US nuclear technology, not to mention massive arms sales, despite their ongoing bomb program.
The deal blew an enormous hole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but initial protests from congressional doves were soon smothered under human-wave assaults by arms company and nuclear industry lobbyists. The Israelis lent additional and potent assistance on Capital Hill. Not coincidentally, Israeli arms dealers, promised a significant slice of the action, have garnered at least $1.5 billion worth of orders from Delhi. (The respected Israeli daily Haaretz has highlighted Indian media reports that the bribes involved totaled $120 million.) Nuclear power’s handmaiden, the global warming lobby, was also a wellspring of ardent support, led by Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian railroad engineer who is Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which shared Al Gore’s Nobel prize.) Even the Dalai Lama was drafted in to use his influence with impressionable members of congress.
The consequent success in overturning a longstanding arms control treaty, which in turn has led to the U.S. extending a helping hand to India’s nuclear rivals in Pakistan, should only be seen as the wave of the future. Instead of foaming at the Iranian nuclear program, we should be standing at the ready to oversee their design of safer, more reliable nukes, and after that, who knows? North Korea’s bomb probably need work too.
Andrew Cockburn writes about national security and related matters. His most recent book is Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy. He is the co-producer of American Casino, the feature documentary on the ongoing financial collapse. He can be reached at amcockburn@gmail.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew06242009.html
The Obama Adminstration is Helping to Upgrade Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One
By ANDREW COCKBURN
"If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen,” Hillary Clinton recently told Fox News, “and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by Al Qaeda and other extremists were to essentially topple the government … then they would have keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan.” Many will note that the extremists posing this unthinkable prospect were set up in business by the U.S. in the first place. Very well buried is the fact that the nuclear arsenal that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of our former allies has been itself the object of U.S. encouragement over the years and is to this very day in receipt of crucial U.S. financial assistance and technical support.
Back in 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, intent on his own jihad against the USSR, declared that the “Afghan resistance” should be supplied with money and arms. That, of course, required full Pakistani cooperation, which would, Brzezinski underlined, “require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.” In other words, Pakistan was free to get on with building a bomb so long as we could arm the people who have subsequently come back to haunt us. Asked for his views on Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, Ronald Reagan replied “I just don’t think it’s any of our business.” During the years that the infamous A.Q. Khan was peddling his uranium enrichment technology around the place, his shipping manager was a CIA agent, whose masters seem to have had little problem with allowing the trade to go forward.
Now comes word from inside the Obama government that little has changed. “Most of the aid we’ve sent them over the past few years has been diverted into their nuclear program,” a senior national security official in the current administration recently told me. Most of this diverted aid -- $5.56 billion as of a year ago – was officially designated “Coalition Support Funds” for Pakistani military operations against the Taliban. It may be that this diversion came as a terrible shock to Washington, but the money has been routinely handed over essentially without accounting being required from the Pakistanis. The GAO has huffed at items such as the $30 million shelled out for non-existent roads, of the $1.5 million for “naval vehicles damaged in combat” but that was as far as public complaints went. In the meantime, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen confirmed recently, the Pakistanis have been urgently increasing their nuclear weapons production.
A former national security official with knowledge of the policy explained this insouciance to me. “We want to get in there and manage [their nuclear program]. If we manage it, we can make sure they don’t start testing, or start a war.” In other words, the U.S. is helping the Pakistanis to modernize their nuclear arsenal in hopes that the U.S. will thereby gain a measure of control. The official aim of U.S. technical support, at an estimated cost of $100 million a year, is to render the Pakistani weapons safer, i.e., less likely to go off if dropped, and more “secure”, meaning out of the reach of our old friends the extremists.
However, in pursuit of this objective, it is inevitable that the U.S. is not only rendering the warheads more operationally reliable, we are also transferring the technology required to design more sophisticated warheads without having to test them, a system known as “stockpile stewardship.”
Conceived after the U.S. forswore live testing in 1993 as a means to “test” weapons through computer simulations, this vastly expensive program not only ensures the weapons’ reliability (at least in theory) but also the viability of new and improved designs. In reality, the stewardship program has been as much a boondoggle for the politically powerful nuclear laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos as anything else, so outreach in the form of assistance to the Pakistanis in this area can only gratify our own weaponeers.
“If you’re not confident that weapons are safe to handle, you’re more likely to keep them in the basement,” says nuclear command and control expert Bruce Blair, President of the World Security Institute. “The military is always pressuring to deploy the weapons, which requires an increase in readiness.” In 2008 Blair himself was approached by the Pakistani military seeking advice on means to render their weapons more secure. Their aim, he says, was clearly to render their nuclear force “mature,” and “operational.” In the same way, says Blair, a few years ago an Indian military delegation turned up at the Russian Impulse Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, to ask for help on making their weapons safer to handle. “They said they wanted to be able to assure their political leadership that their weapons were safe enough to be deployed.”
Pakistan’s drive to build more nukes is an inevitable by-product of the 2008 nuclear cooperation deal with India that overturned U.S. law and gave the Indians access to US nuclear technology, not to mention massive arms sales, despite their ongoing bomb program.
The deal blew an enormous hole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but initial protests from congressional doves were soon smothered under human-wave assaults by arms company and nuclear industry lobbyists. The Israelis lent additional and potent assistance on Capital Hill. Not coincidentally, Israeli arms dealers, promised a significant slice of the action, have garnered at least $1.5 billion worth of orders from Delhi. (The respected Israeli daily Haaretz has highlighted Indian media reports that the bribes involved totaled $120 million.) Nuclear power’s handmaiden, the global warming lobby, was also a wellspring of ardent support, led by Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian railroad engineer who is Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which shared Al Gore’s Nobel prize.) Even the Dalai Lama was drafted in to use his influence with impressionable members of congress.
The consequent success in overturning a longstanding arms control treaty, which in turn has led to the U.S. extending a helping hand to India’s nuclear rivals in Pakistan, should only be seen as the wave of the future. Instead of foaming at the Iranian nuclear program, we should be standing at the ready to oversee their design of safer, more reliable nukes, and after that, who knows? North Korea’s bomb probably need work too.
Andrew Cockburn writes about national security and related matters. His most recent book is Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy. He is the co-producer of American Casino, the feature documentary on the ongoing financial collapse. He can be reached at amcockburn@gmail.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew06242009.html
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Pakistan Rules Out Test Ban Treaty Endorsement
Pakistan Rules Out Test Ban Treaty Endorsement
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090619_9389.php
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090619_9389.php
Disarmament Lessons from the Chemical Weapons Convention
Disarmament Lessons from the Chemical Weapons Convention
Mikhail Gorbachev and Rogelio Pfirter, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/disarmament-lessons-the-chemical-weapons-convention
The recent joint declaration by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to negotiate a new treaty reducing their countries' nuclear stockpiles as a first step toward "a nuclear-weapon-free world" has spurred hopes for renewed progress in global disarmament after a decade of gridlock. An excellent example of how nations can work together effectively within a multilateral framework to eliminate weapons of mass destruction is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
* WMD Threats and International Organizations
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1362&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl
Mikhail Gorbachev and Rogelio Pfirter, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/disarmament-lessons-the-chemical-weapons-convention
The recent joint declaration by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to negotiate a new treaty reducing their countries' nuclear stockpiles as a first step toward "a nuclear-weapon-free world" has spurred hopes for renewed progress in global disarmament after a decade of gridlock. An excellent example of how nations can work together effectively within a multilateral framework to eliminate weapons of mass destruction is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
* WMD Threats and International Organizations
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1362&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl
U.S. Scrambles for Information on Iran
U.S. Scrambles for Information on Iran
Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23diplo.html?_r=1&hp
As President Obama and his advisers watch the drama unfolding in Tehran, they are having to cope with a frustrating lack of reliable information — about the clashes between the police and protesters, about the strength of the opposition movement and, most of all, about the divisions within the ranks of Iran's powerful clerics.
* Iran Buying More from US in Spite of Tensions
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUg-I6_iSl9-azPuAad_QeXVGm2QD98V86U03
Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23diplo.html?_r=1&hp
As President Obama and his advisers watch the drama unfolding in Tehran, they are having to cope with a frustrating lack of reliable information — about the clashes between the police and protesters, about the strength of the opposition movement and, most of all, about the divisions within the ranks of Iran's powerful clerics.
* Iran Buying More from US in Spite of Tensions
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUg-I6_iSl9-azPuAad_QeXVGm2QD98V86U03
Iran's Elections: The International Implications Shahram Chubin, Proliferation Analysis
Iran's Elections: The International Implications
Shahram Chubin, Proliferation Analysis
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=23310&prog=zgp&proj=znpp
IranIran's nuclear ambitions and behavior regionally have generated concerns, internationally, eliciting EU and UN Security Council reactions. The conventional wisdom in the West has been that Iranians support these policies and that there is at best only a difference of "tone" between the various factions in this area. This is mistaken. Recent events underline how much foreign policy has been used by hardliners for partisan purposes and how much scope there is for meaningful change in this area.
* Text of President Obama's June 23 Press Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/us/politics/23text-obama.html?_r=1
Shahram Chubin, Proliferation Analysis
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=23310&prog=zgp&proj=znpp
IranIran's nuclear ambitions and behavior regionally have generated concerns, internationally, eliciting EU and UN Security Council reactions. The conventional wisdom in the West has been that Iranians support these policies and that there is at best only a difference of "tone" between the various factions in this area. This is mistaken. Recent events underline how much foreign policy has been used by hardliners for partisan purposes and how much scope there is for meaningful change in this area.
* Text of President Obama's June 23 Press Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/us/politics/23text-obama.html?_r=1
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