Scientist sees centrifuges, others see international catastrophe
The press has underlined the risks North Korea’s recently revealed centrifuges entail,and others have been quick to draw broad international conclusions (see Simon Henderson, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3274). But it is well worth reading Siegfried Hecker’s original report, which is cautiously judicious, while raising many important questions.
Certainly Henderson goes a bit far in speculating about hydrogen bombs. He is on more solid ground in his discussion of possible nuclear and missile trade, once considered unlikely to happen by nonproliferation experts.
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Biden forgets Moqtada
You’ll all notice the Vice President’s piece in the New York Times this morning, which is a fine summary of what remains to be done in Iraq, but neglects to mention that the new Iraqi government will include the Sadrists, a violently anti-American political force that Washington tried to block from joining the governing coalition. Does this presage a changed American attitude, or just a polite effort to put the best face on things?
P.S.: Note the vigorous support for the “National Council for Higher Policies” (it comes out differently in every translation), which is the main thing Allawi gained from eight months of negotiation.
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Weekend reading and touring
More than 10 years managing programs at USIP have left me well behind in the bookreading category. This week’s efforts will be focused on finishing Joseph Stiglitz’ and Linda Bilmes’ The Three Trillion Dollar War, now two years old but still edifying, and Michael Mandelbaum’s more recent and even more edifying The Frugal Superpower, which examines the constraints fiscal stringency will put on American foreign policy. Both are well-written, easy reads, on which I’ll comment more fully once I’ve finished them.
I’m also planning a visit today to President Lincoln’s Cottage, where he spent many nights during the Civil War. Adjacent to a Union cemetery, the cottage is today largely unfurnished. But the National Park Service tour somehow manages to evoke the environment in which Lincoln deliberated on slavery and war. There is nothing like your own civil war for beginning to understand other people’s civil wars.
I’ll be on the road tomorrow but hope to be up and running again bright and early Monday. Have a fine weekend!
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An Iranian enrichment gambit
If New START has fallen into the abyss of partisan politics within the U.S., the issue of Iran’s effort to achieve nuclear weapons capability has fallen into the abyss of U.S.-Iranian relations, which seem capable of oscillating only between bad and worse, with an occasional move towards catastrophic. The Stimson Center and USIP have attempted to fish it out with a study group report advocating “strategic engagement.”
The approach is sagacious: while discounting the likelihood of any regime change stemming from the Green Movement in the near future, the expert group focuses on what can be done to strengthen those conservatives with reason to regret international sanctions and to want them ended, at the expense of hardliners who want nuclear weapons at any cost and have no interest in normalizing relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world. It rightly sees the tightening of sanctions as part of strategic engagement.
The group wants the U.S. (and the rest of the world) to acknowledge Iranian rights to enrichment, in the hope that doing so will enable an agreement that limits the degree and/or quantity of enrichment, hoping even for a phase-out. Here is the key sentence from the report: “Washington should signal its clear—if also clearly conditional—acceptance of Iran’s enrichment rights, providing that Tehran negotiates verifiable limits on the degree of enrichment and on the volume of enriched fuel stored in Iran.”
This is not a new idea, as a quick search reveals Matthew Bunn of Harvard put it out a year ago. Making a virtue of necessity is a tried and true approach in diplomacy. Iran is already enriching, why imagine you can stop it altogether?
It is easy to imagine how this idea will go over in some quarters, where even a substantial cut in Russian nuclear weapons is having a hard time getting a hearing. There are three rational criticisms likely: 1) Iran has lost its “right” to enrichment by violating its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), 2) what reason is there to believe Iran will agree to anything on enrichment once its right is acknowledged, however conditionally? 3) what would prevent Iran from reneging on the agreement and enriching beyond the specified limits, either overtly or covertly?
Iran appears to have agreed to restart nuclear talks December 5. Will the enrichment gambit be tested then?
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“Forlorn Karzai breaking with the west”
Ahmed Rashid in the FT tries to convey how the world looks in the eyes of President Karzai: he sees in the West mixed messages, inability to get Pakistan to do the right things, a cacophony of ambassadors, vacillation about staying and going, unfair criticism, and manufactured rumors of mental imbalance. Preparing for NATO departure, the President is reasserting Afghan nationalism and trying to cut deals with the Taliban supported by Pakistan and Iran.
Larry Korb reporting from Kabul confirms that the President is largely in tune with others there, who are frustrated and unappreciative of the Administration’s surge and other efforts.
Meanwhile, in Lisbon NATO is preparing to reaffirm July 2011 as the beginning of its drawdown, with 2014 as the target date for completing the turnover of primary security responsibility to Kabul (a training/mentoring mission would remain). This reflects political feasibility in Europe and the U.S. as much as it does Afghan reality, but it is still an enormous additional investment. The question remains: is Karzai worth the candle? But it is the kind of question that won’t be asked once this NATO Summit has set its course.
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New START needs a new start
Ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia has fallen into the partisan abyss we still call America. The left claims failure to ratify will encourage Iran to get nuclear weapons. The right fears grave impairment of the nation’s nuclear defenses.
Both claims are what the car guys call “BOOOOOOGUS.” Iran is likely to go for nuclear weapons capability no matter what happens to New START, which will only marginally decrease America’s nuclear forces. And failure to ratify will lead only to a pause in Washington’s reset with Moscow, which has good reason to react calmly.
That said, the Administration needs to get the treaty off to a new start if it expects ratification in either this lame duck Congress or the next. Turning down the rhetoric and turning up some careful analysis of the facts would be a good place to start. It is hard to believe that we can’t figure out a way to make a dispassionate and reasoned decision to reduce a number of weapons that hawks in both Washington and Moscow agree is excessive.
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