January 18, 2006
Feeling Completely Hopeless - The Iranian Nuclear Problem
:Iran’s decision this past week to restart their nuclear program appeared to come out of nowhere. Many have recently speculated as to how the European Union’s talks with Tehran failed or how the United States can get the Russians and the Chinese on board for new sanctions. But this is a distorted conversation. Iran’s re-started nuclear ambition was easily predictable with the events ongoing in neighboring Iraq.
At the outset of the invasion of Iraq, conservative columnists lined up to praise the invasion as a way to demonstrate to other dictators what would happen if they “misbehaved.” When, five days after Saddam Hussein was arrested, Muammar al-Qaddafi announced his intention to give up a WMD program, conservatives saw this as proof. Charles Krauthammer, at the time, wrote that it could not be a coincidence. Dictators were feeling the “aftershocks of war.” For the sake of argument and ignoring many scholars who point to Qaddafi offering the same thing for four years to end Western sanctions, let’s assume that Krauthammer was right - the invasion of Iraq did make nations more civil – then we are in store for a difficult few years.
The problem with this conservative view that a successful invasion would be a message to the rest of the world is what happens when the invasion fails or at least bogs down. The invasion tied up our military. Over 100,000 troops are stationed just across the border in Iraq but none of them can be spared to threaten Iran. Effectively the United States does not have any teeth. If the Iraq invasion was supposed to be a message, a rogue state now knows they have until the United States leaves Iraq to acquire nuclear weapons. If you accept the argument, then you also accept that the rest of the world gets the opposite message if the invasion fails.
And that is where we are with a failed invasion. If you agreed with Krauthammer’s views three years ago, you would have assumed that if Iraq failed you would end up where we are today. That is why I was so surprised today when I read Krauthammer’s column in the Washington Post where he blamed the European Union’s misguided and naïve talks with Iran. It was a complete red herring argument.
While, the European Union’s talks with Tehran may have been imperceptive of the true Iranian desire, one should not hold the EU accountable for that. They had little choice. If there are two ways of dealing with the situation a) diplomacy and b) military, they had no choice when the US invaded Iraq. And when the wheels came off the US military in Iraq, there was no threat. Of course, the Iranians pulled out of their commitments to arms inspections and seals. They always wanted a nuke and now they had their chance.
All of this angers me. I share this administration’s desire to limit the nuclear club and do not feel comfortable with a Tehran hot button. But it isn’t surprising. After all we have been hopeless to do anything about it since we tied up our military for a decade in invading Iraq. That Krauthammer and other conservatives didn’t see it coming doesn’t make it unexpected. Just them blind to the problems of invading Iraq.
(Filed under: Iraq, Bush Administration, Middle East, Iran, Commentary, Europe, America, Global Issues, Nuclear Proliferation, European Union)
October 31, 2005
Syria
:The US, France, and England are threatening action (most likely economic sanctions) in the UN against Syria’s government, which a UN report last week accused of having a hand in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The resolution would take effect if Syria does not give full cooperation to investigations and does not provide suspects in the killings. Negotiations are under way to make sure that China or Russia do not block the resolution with a veto.
(Filed under: Iraq, Middle East, UN, Europe, America, Global Issues)
Food for Oil Scandal
:The UN released the fifth and final report in an investigation of a scandal resulting in the UN and Iraq’s food-for-oil scheme. The document described how more than 2,400 businesses (many of them French and Russian) from over sixty countries paid nearly $1.8 billion in illegally kickbacks to the Hussein regime through the plan. The scandal has been a huge embarrassment to Secretary General Kofi Annan, whose son played a role in the kickbacks.
(Filed under: Iraq, Middle East, UN, Global Issues)
New Delhi Terrorism
:A coordinated succession of powerful blasts ripped through two New Delhi markets killed at least 55 people. Another 155 people are reported injured. The blasts occur the weekend before Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival in north India, and befor Id al-Fitr, the festival that closes the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
(Filed under: Asia, India, Global Issues, Terrorism)
October 24, 2005
Earthquake Aftermath
:Over two weeks after the earthquake, the horrors remain. After the disaster, where over 53,000 people are dead and another 75,000 injured, a second wave of death is beginning. Much of this can be attributed to a lack of water and other supplies for the victims. The UN is working on a ‘Berlin Airlift’ plan to bring the needed supplies to the region but aftershocks in the region and a lack of suitable infrastructure are compounding the logistical nightmare.
(Filed under: Natural Disasters, Asia, India, Kashmir, UN, Earthquake, Pakistan)
Syria
:The UN’s investigation into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister and leading reformer, Rafik Hariri, has implicated that top Syrian and Lebanese officials were a part of the conspiracy. The report, which is a status update to an investigation that has until December, faulted Syrian officials for being uncooperative. The report led to increased international pressure, the United States called for an urgent Security Council action and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice did not rule out expanding the war in Iraq to Syria.
(Filed under: Middle East, UN, America, Global Issues, Syria)
Global Temperatures
:The same week that a record 22nd tropical storm was named in the Atlantic Ocean, the first to use a Greek letter to identify it, scientists announced research that suggests that increased temperature will cause an increase in extreme weather. Under a scenario that used U.S. weather from 1961 to 1985 to predict weather from 2071 to 2095, the coldest day in the Northeast will be as much as 18 degrees warmer. The Gulf Coast will see less frequent but more intense rain, while the Southwest will become drier and hotter.
(Filed under: Natural Disasters, Environmental Impact, Science / Technology, Global Issues)
October 17, 2005
World Temperatures
:New international climate data shows that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record. Climatologists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculated the record-breaking global average, which now surpasses 1998’s record by a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. This comes on the heel of an announcement late last month that the Arctic ice cap shrank to 200 million square miles, 500,000 square miles less than the average between 1979 and 2000.
(Filed under: Environmental Impact, Global Issues)
Commentary – Third World Policies
:Third World nations lag behind the First world in almost every measure leading to much European and American guilt and aid. But two measures that were proposed this week in the United States that could lead to actual improvement and the Third World helping itself seems to have little chance of passing.
First, the United States proposed reducing farm subsidies in this nation by sixty-percent to jump-start the so-called Doha Round of World Trade Negotiations. The Doha Round was started because Third World nations have criticized subsidies of industrial nations’ farm products that reduce the prices that Third World countries can receive on the only products they can sell on the international market. While the European Union responded with a proposal of their own that appears to be less generous than the American proposal, Japan completely balked at the proposal.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress appears very unlikely to agree to a Bush proposal that would allow food aid for African nations to be purchased in other African nations, instead of shipping American crops. By purchasing African crops for food aid, the U.S. would join Europe in using aid to accomplish two goals: 1) feed the hungry and 2) fund market development in other African nations. But this proposal means that farmers that are supportive of aid because the food is purchased from American farmers would not be less supportive of aid in the future.
While both proposals have significant political opposition, they actually make sense for both international development and in saving money for American tax payers. By cutting subsidies, America would save billions of tax dollars while also lowering food prices for consumers, while leveling the playing field for poor farmers around the globe. By purchasing crops in Africa for food aid, American tax payers would be charged less for aid, while allowing African nations to build their own economy. In both cases, politicians should accept some political cost and accept proposals that will actually do the majority of the world population some good.
(Filed under: Bush Administration, Commentary, Politics, Economy, UN, Europe, America, Global Issues, Health, European Union)
October 10, 2005
Indonesia Bombing Investigation
:Investigators in Bali believe that the bombings are not linked to the al Qaeda terrorist network and instead are the work of a small group like the one that perpetrated the July London subway bombings. Investigators are searching for two men that appear to have helped the suicide bombers.
(Filed under: Asia, Indonesia, Global Issues, Terrorism)
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