Month: July 2021
Better jaw jaw than war, but the strategic risks are real
Former IAEA Inspector Pantelis Ikonomou writes:
The sixth round of the Vienna negotiations aimed at restoring the multilateral Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA) were halted last week. At the same time, the temporary technical agreement between the IAEA and Iran, intended to enable the revival of the Iran deal, expired. Iran denies any obligation to provide an answer on the fate of this accord. Stalemate or death of JCPOA? Will this open the door to an additional de facto nuclear weapon state?
Judging intentions is difficult. Learning from facts has mostly proven wise. Some relevant facts are outlined below.
The development of the current North Korea and Iran nuclear challenges show similarities. The key common shortcoming of the world powers in dealing with these two challenges is that we (ineffectively) talk but they (strategically) continue. Equivalent lessons could also be learned from the earlier “peaceful” nuclear explosion of India in 1974 that has led to about 140 nuclear warheads in its arsenal today and to approximately the same number in Pakistan.
As for North Korea:
I1. n the period 1994–2002 of the “Agreed Framework” implementation, great attention went to terminating the possibility of plutonium production in the Yongbyon reactor while the country’s potential in enriching uranium was neglected.
2. During the years 2003–2009 of the “Six Party Talks,” the US linked other issues to the negotiations instead of concentrating on the main nuclear objective: how to curb fissile material acquisition.
3. Keen observers note the North Korean nuclear program “nuclear progress slowed significantly during times of diplomacy and accelerated during times of isolation, sanctions and threats.”
Result: Creation of an additional de-facto nuclear weapons state, North Korea, with an estimated number of 20 to 30 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, including thermonuclear capacity.
As for Iran:
- The crisis began in 2003 when IAEA inspectors identified a possible military dimension in Tehran’s civilian nuclear program. From 2003 to 2012, despite twelve IAEA and two UNSC resolutions culminating in trade and economic sanctions, Iran continued its non-compliance with obligations under the international Safeguards Agreement. Tehran regarded nuclear activities as its inalienable national right.
- This dangerous escalation was halted by the JCPOA in July 2015, after almost a decade of complex and sensitive diplomatic negotiations between the six world powers (the five UNSC permanent members plus Germany) and Iran. This Agreement stipulated obligations on both sides: termination of critical nuclear activities as well as limits to certain installed equipment, material stockpiles and uranium enrichment levels in Iran in exchange for lifting of sanctions.
- This honeymoon period lasted until May 2018 when US withdrew from the JCPOA and started reimposing sanctions. In January 2020, after the killing of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, Tehran changed its stance towards JCPOA. Progress achieved through the Agreement was then reversed.
- In February 2021, Iran’s parliament passed a law on terminating the JCPOA, including the associated voluntary implementation of the rigorous Additional Protocol (AP) to its Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA.
Result: Increased instability and volatility in the region.
“What is next?” is the justified question. A few practical reflections:
- An eventual positive conclusion of the Vienna talks on the revival of JCPOA will not automatically bring definitive relief. The damage done after 2018 to the Iran deal cannot be verifiably restored quickly. Notwithstanding the professionalism and objectivity of the IAEA, restoration of the Agreement will require enormous effort, high additional costs, as well as the continuous and smooth cooperation of Iran’s competent authorities.
- For the successful revival of JCPOA the recently expired temporary arrangement between Iran and the IAEA needs to be extended immediately. Re-establishing the inspectors’ continuity of knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program is sine qua non for the IAEA to be able to draw the necessary broader conclusions on the exclusively peaceful character of Iran’s nuclear program.
- In case the JCPOA is not renewed, monitoring Iran under its IAEA comprehensive safeguards agreement without the AP in place would perpetuate unresolved issues relating to questionable findings of materials, locations and activities. This unfortunate situation would create problems not only with Iran but also with other states in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, who are being called to satisfy the same universal safeguards criteria.
The omens for stability and security of the world are not encouraging while the responsibility of the parties involved is growing larger.
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Stevenson’s army, July 2
– WH released a staff list.
– The Hill explains the numbers.
– Biden sends Congress his 3d war powers letter.
-International agreement on global minimum tax.
– Fred Kaplan, longtime analyst of DOD, comments on Rumsfeld.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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North Macedonia is success story, may it continue!
Here are the remarks I made via Zoom to the Prespa Forum Dialogue in Skopje this morning:
- First let me say what a pleasure it is to celebrate 20 years since the Ohrid Framework Agreement.
- My friends in the Balkans often say nothing has changed since the wars of 1992-2001, or that things were better in the 1990s.
- I beg to differ.
- I first met diplomats from what was then called FYROM at the United Nations in the early 1990s. They were suspicious and secretive, even hostile toward Americans and their values.
- You only need to look at the agenda of this conference to realize how much has changed: it opened with sessions on business and civil society, then you talked about accession to the European Union and women’s empowerment as well as the role of diplomacy.
- That agenda would have been inconceivable 20 years ago.
- Where are the sessions on security? On ethnic identity? On Balkan history?
- Those issues are not forgotten, but they no longer command the attention once they did.
- Yes, there has been progress in the Balkans.
- Perhaps most of all in what officials now call North Macedonia, but which I will occasionally call just “Macedonia,” as permitted by Article 7 paragraph 5 of the Prespa Agreement.
- Anyone who objects should ask themselves whether they always call my country “the United States of America,” or sometimes shorten it to “United States” or just “America.”
- Macedonia is a success story.
- It survived the 1990s wars of Yugoslav succession, the influx of Kosovo refugees, the uncivil war of 2001, a decade of rapid and necessarily disruptive economic reform, an abusive prime minister, an attack on parliament, contested elections, and waves of crisis coming from outside the country: the 2007/8 financial crisis, the Greek debt debacle, the refugee influx, and most recently COVID19.
- Along the way, Macedonia has better integrated its society, experienced substantial economic growth, demarcated its Kosovo border, improved its electoral process, resolved the “name” issue, deployed troops in Afghanistan embedded with the Vermont Nation Guard, joined NATO, gained EU candidacy, and tried to resolve its historical and linguistic issues with Bulgaria.
- The Ohrid and Prespa agreements merit special mention, because more than any others in the Balkans they aim not only to solve immediate problems but also to lay the basis for permanent resolution of the underlying drivers of conflict.
- Ohrid institutionalized minority rights in Macedonia in a way that has proven durable, even if still not entirely satisfactory to some. Prespa opened the door to a fuller understanding of Greek as well as Macedonian ethnic identity.
- Both were done as joint US/EU projects, working with the Macedonian government. This is the most important lesson we should learn from the past 20 years: when Brussels and Washington truly share an enterprise with local authorities, it is far more likely to bring positive results.
- I wish I could say as much about the Dayton peace accords, which became a joint US/EU product only after their signature and now require major reform to disempower the ethnic nationalists who fought the Bosnian wars and have strangled the peace.
- North Macedonia is far more advanced. Enough so that it can now focus as never before on the economic and social welfare of Macedonia’s citizens.
- The clouds on the horizon now come mainly from outside Macedonia—Bulgaria’s claims about its own ethnic identity and Serbia’s renewal of its territorial ambitions in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro, which threaten to de-stabilize the region.
- I hardly need mention the too frequent rumble of Russian troublemaking and the temptations of Chinese financing.
- I trust North Macedonia will confront these challenges in the same spirit as it has resolved others: with determination to protect its own vital interests while accommodating when it can those of others.
- I admire that approach. It is sensible and realistic, but also ambitious and idealistic. I might even hope Skopje’s idealism and pragmatism are contagious and will spread to Belgrade, Pristina, and Sarajevo.
- Twenty years ago, Jim Pardew, may his memory be a blessing, helped negotiate the Ohrid agreement, along with Francois Leotard. They worked on the basis of ideas put forward by Bob Frowick, then the OSCE representative, may his memory also be a blessing.
- Americans and Europeans alike should feel pleased and proud that those efforts have paid dividends: we can now count North Macedonia as an ally and friend that shares Western values.
- Let me conclude by saying: I hope I will see the day Macedonia accedes to the European Union!
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Stevenson’s army, July 1, second edition
Donald Rumsfeld was a strong but flawed Secretary of Defense. He asserted civilian control of the U.S. military and tried to reshape it for 21st century warfare, only to embrace conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that turned into forever wars.
I started writing SecDef: the nearly impossible job of Secretary of Defense during his second tour and published it a few months before he was fired. At the time I was impressed by his performance in office. I believed in civilian control as a principle and liked his assertiveness. I believed DOD needed radical reforms and welcomed his efforts at “transformation.” I began to question his management of the war in Afghanistan and became disillusioned by his handling of the war in Iraq.
Then I began to hear stories from my students at the National War College and read insider journalistic accounts of his conduct.
He was so determined to assert civilian control that he often demanded that military officers sit as backbenchers rather than at the main table. He told subordinates that, in interagency meetings, they could not agree to anything that had not already been decided within DOD, nor could they agree to anything else. This attitude constipated the interagency process.
Rumsfeld managed the Pentagon with “snowflakes,” short memos on major and petty topics, that forced officials into crisis response modes rather than careful deliberation. While many subordinates appreciated his demanding style and were willing to respond to his challenges, others found him abusive.
As I write in SecDef, the job has 4 major responsibilities: managing the Pentagon, advising the president and the NSC, planning wars, and serving as an important diplomat. He did reasonably well only in that last case.
His management of DOD was flawed by his over-reliance on snowflakes. His NSC role undermined the interagency process. He criticized the National Security Council processes and meetings run by Condoleezza Rice and worked to avoid them. As the youngest Secretary of Defense, under President Gerald Ford, he fought Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on policy grounds, especially policy toward the Soviet Union. In his second tour, now the oldest SecDef, under President George W. Bush, he again fought the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, over policy, turf, politics, and governmental processes.
As a war planner, he often excluded others, including the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He nitpicked deployment plans, causing numerous disruptions. He cuts military requests for troops for Iraq in a risky effort to prove he was transforming the military. He demanded control over operations but cleverly avoided responsibility when problems arose, blaming others instead.
He once told an audience of soldiers who complained about problems in the Iraq war, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense we had at the time, not necessarily the one we might have wanted or needed.
Here are some of the other, more critical assessments of his service. From George Packer, Spencer Ackerman, and Sarah Jones.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, July 1
China appears to be building 100 more missile silos.
HASC Chairman questions private funding of National Guard deployment to Texas. Military Times says it’s legal.
IISS assesses various national cyber capabilities.
Pew study of 2020 presidential election shows different strengths of Trump and Biden.
Donald Rumsfeld died yesterday. I’ll send an assessment separately.
FYI, I have a lot of Grandparent Duty this month, so postings will be infrequent.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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