Lost in the Folds of Iraq and North Korea
By BILL CHRISTISON
former CIA political analyst
A few decades ago, a cliché invaded Washington's bureaucracies. It was a
cliché that many of us self-decreed sophisticates in the U.S. foreign-policy
establishment came to use, and then shamelessly overuse, to belittle anyone
(sometimes a superior, more often a competitor in another agency) who
happened to disagree with the one's own views. Low-voiced comments about
this or that #$&* SOB being "way behind the power curve" filtered into
government conference rooms, dining rooms, and even hallways. Until it
succumbed to parody from the crescendo of overuse, this was truly a
multi-purpose cliché. It sounded so good that some of us would, pompously
and with just the right profession of cynicism and self-deprecation, apply
it in a less insulting way to ourselves. As in, "We can't afford to fall
behind the power curve on this one [i.e., any issue that seemed important at
the moment], so here's what I think we ought to do."
The "power curve" itself normally went undefined, but the very word "power"
elicited, as was intended, knowing nods and narrowed eyes suggesting that
most users or hearers of the cliché, at least those who valued their
positions in the bureaucracy, wished to be seen as hard pragmatists with a
lesser interest in "unrealistic" ethics, morals, or principles. Not
surprisingly, the dominance of this cliché coincided with the early 1970s,
the last years of the Nixon administration.
Today there are grounds for hope that the Bush administration itself is
already falling irretrievably behind the power curve of its own amoral and
unprincipled pragmatism. The immediate reason for such hope arises from the
embarrassment and bumbling inside the administration over the
inconsistencies between U.S. policies toward Iraq on the one hand and toward
North Korea on the other. We need to look at recent history to see why
recent events concerning North Korea, assuming they are ultimately resolved
without an East Asian nuclear holocaust, should be seen as a positive
development by those of us who want peace and justice in the Middle East as
well as in East Asia in the next few decades, rather than more wars
initiated by the United States.
Early in 2001, far-right, hawkish, and violence-prone governments took power
at roughly the same time in both the U.S. and Israel. The leaders of the two
new governments had already developed a very good personal and political
chemistry with each other. The events of September 11 further strengthened
the ties between them as they became ever-firmer allies in the War on
Terrorism and quickly agreed on each other's highly selective definitions of
who were terrorists and evil-doers (and who were not). A few months later,
Bush lumped Iraq, Iran, and North Korea into an Axis of Evil in his January
2002 state-of-the-union address to Congress. Then, egged on by Vice
President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and a small but very
influential group of pro-Likud neo-cons scattered through the
administration, as well as by U.S. Christian fundamentalist leaders who
solidly support both Bush's and the Sharon government's present policies,
the president spent much of the year 2002 ratcheting up the pressures for
war against Iraq. Actually, the neo-con officials in the U.S. and Likud
leaders in Israel have been pressing for the ouster of the present Iraqi
government for the past decade.
On the issue of Iraq, disagreement within the administration, largely from
Secretary of State Powell and a few former officials like Brent Scowcroft,
has slowed the Bush drive toward war since the early fall of 2002. But so
far at least, Powell has been willing to confront Bush only on the issue of
unilateralism. Right now, the odds on what will happen over the next month
or two run something like this.
First, there is a tiny chance that in response to a low-key Arab campaign,
Saddam Hussein will take up a proposal that he resign and accept sanctuary
in some Arab land. The U.S. conceivably could then decide it was impossible
to go to war. Not a good bet.
Second, a larger but still pretty minuscule chance exists that a successful
coup attempt against Saddam will take place and bring about regime change,
thus putting off at least temporarily Washington's need for war.
Third, a considerably greater but still less than fifty-fifty chance exists
that the current inspection scenario will play out to an impasse in which so
many of the nations now on the U.N. Security Council will refuse to support
the U.S., and Colin Powell will oppose Bush so strongly, that Bush himself
will back off and at least postpone a war for some months or an entire year.
Fourth and most likely (here the odds are definitely greater then
fifty-fifty), the Bush administration will start a war against Iraq in the
next 30 to 50 days.
So how is it possible to have any optimism about this situation? Just look
at where we stand. The Bush administration really wants this war against
Iraq for reasons in no way altruistic: reasons having to do (1) with oil,
(2) with the U.S. drive for global domination, and (3) with Israel (in the
belief, first, that getting rid of Saddam Hussein will enhance Israel's
position in the Middle East and, second, that supporting the Sharon
government's own strong desire for the war will also strengthen Bush's
domestic 2004 reelection bid). Bush does not want to talk about any of these
factors, and above all he certainly does not want to advertise the fact that
he desires a war in part because the present leadership of Israel wants it.
Instead, the Bush administration has essentially lied to the American people
and the rest of the world by trying to sell the war on two other grounds
that Bush himself almost certainly regards as less important: the need for
Iraq to disarm and give up all weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and an
alleged desire to turn Iraq into a democracy. Particularly on disarmament,
the administration has carried out for months an intense propaganda
operation to persuade people that this is THE issue we must be ready to kill
for and to launch a preemptive war over.
How, you might ask, could preventing the further spread of WMD, particularly
nuclear weapons, around the world be considered by anyone in his right mind
a "less important" issue?
The answer is quite simple. Except as a propaganda tool, every U.S.
administration since Harry Truman's has in practice made the spread of
nuclear weapons, the major type of WMD, a less important issue than the
short-term perceived needs of U.S. national security. That's close to 58
years now. No administration has ever been willing even to discuss giving up
the United States' own nuclear weapons. In these same years, however, most
U.S. leaders and practically every American foreign policy or intelligence
"expert" who ever worked on the nuclear-proliferation issue understood that,
given this cast-in-concrete U.S. policy, preventing the further spread of
such weapons among either friends or foes over the long run was impossible.
The result is that over the past half-century, the U.S. has badly botched,
and been completely hypocritical about, its alleged policy of opposing
nuclear proliferation. The administrations of Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson, who made the most noise against proliferation, are regarded by the
Arab and Muslim worlds as the most hypocritical of all, because they
acquiesced in Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons during the 1960s.
Let's move nearer to the present. As early as March 2001, the Bush
administration went through a phase of blaming Russia for helping other
nations to obtain nuclear weapons. On the 23rd of that month, Donald
Rumsfeld stated on national television, "Let's be very honest about what
Russia is doing. Russia is an active proliferator. They are part of the
problem. They are selling and assisting countries like Iran and North Korea
and India with these technologies which are threatening other people,
including the United States"
Russia continues to this day providing aid to Iran, and U.S. criticism of
Russia for doing so also continues, although since September 11 the rhetoric
has cooled because Moscow is now Bush's good ally in the War on Terror. But
such statements as Rumsfeld's have made a very unfavorable impression in
nations that do not entirely support U.S. policies. They believe the United
States itself has been an "active proliferator" since World War II, most
particularly with respect to Israel. Rumsfeld and most U.S. policymakers,
past and present, seem not to understand how profoundly mistrusted we are
because of our lenient attitude toward Israel's nuclear capability. Many
other nations will never accept a status quo that perpetuates Israeli
possession of nuclear weapons and at the same time prevents them from ever
acquiring such weapons. They will always be suspicious that the U.S. really
opposes nuclear proliferation only for its enemies, while acting too often
as a hidden enabler of proliferation for its friends.
This entire confusing mess has finally come home to roost at the beginning
of 2003. The U.S. has spent years pursuing inconsistent policies on
proliferation, in practice downgrading the importance of the issue while
noisily playing up its importance in propaganda. And the propaganda volume
control has been turned to the very maximum in order to obfuscate the real
reasons why the administration wants war with Iraq.
Now, just as crunch-time is arriving for Iraq, along comes North Korea to
embarrass the big, hypocritical bully and ramp up quiet eruptions of what
must be very satisfying schadenfreude in more nations of the world than
Washington can easily count. It's not worth bothering even to discuss the
weird statements coming out of Rome on the Potomac that attempt to explain
why we cannot use our shiny new preemptive war strategy on North Korea right
now, even though in military terms that nation would appear to be a
considerably greater danger than Iraq to its own neighbors and even to the
U.S. None of the arguments swirling around Washington address in a
meaningful way the most important points we should be talking about.
The first point that needs more discussion is that, even if the U.S. quickly
and successfully polishes off Iraq, in an immediate military sense anyway,
and then a few weeks later goes and does the same to North Korea, the world
has already seen the most aggressive U.S. administration since Teddy
Roosevelt blink, and blink big time. The perceived value and reliability of
the U.S. as a protective shield against potential enemies of our allies will
inevitably diminish. In this regard, think immediately of Japan and Taiwan,
which look on the U.S. as a shield against both North Korea and, more
importantly, China. Think also, in a somewhat longer time frame, of other
Southeast Asian countries from Thailand to Australia that might question the
"stayability" of the U.S. Whatever else happens, a sea-change is probable in
the U.S. relationship with Asia. (But think too of positive changes, both in
Asia and elsewhere, that might be more likely to emerge over time than
seemed possible even a few weeks ago. A multipolar world has its pluses.)
The second point to be aware of is that, if the stalemate between North
Korea and the U.S. drags on for more than a few weeks, other nations in the
world will see even greater value in having their own nuclear weapons, and
perhaps also other types of WMD. The Bush administration can argue all it
wants that it does not have to hurry in solving the North Korean problem.
Its arguments will be nonsense. Each week that passes will to some degree
increase the likelihood that one nation or another, or even some subnational
group, will initiate or expand a WMD program. At a minimum, nuclear weapons
alone will have made it possible for North Korea to stand up to the U.S. for
a longer period than most of us up to now would have thought possible.
(At the unthinkable opposite extreme, of course, if either side should
actually use nuclear weapons in an effort to resolve this confrontation
between the U.S. and North Korea, the long-term results would be completely
unpredictable. The only useful thing one can say about this contingency is
that the U.S. should not start any conventional military action that might
lead to the use of nuclear weapons, and it categorically should never be the
first to use nuclear weapons.)
A third point: North Korea has made it clearer than ever that in a world of
nation-states, the only world we'll have for some time to come, small
countries are increasingly able to obtain nuclear weapons and other WMD. One
small country, Israel, got them in the late 1960s, but its ties with an
acquiescent United States made it a special case. North Korea already has
become, or is on the verge of becoming, the second small country to acquire
nuclear weapons. (Pakistan and India are both much larger and more powerful,
and not really in the category of "small.") The Bush administration is
seriously in error if it believes that it can ever so dominate the rest of
the world militarily that it can suppress all nuclear and other WMD threats
against itself. The best rational judgment one can make is that the
opportunity for global domination is already lost to this and any future
administration. Not only the threats but also the actuality of further
nuclear and other WMD proliferation will almost certainly increase in the
next few years. The present events involving North Korea, and the U.S.
reaction thereto, only encourage such a development.
A fourth point: The inconsistencies of U.S. policy and tactics toward Iraq
and North Korea will undoubtedly increase suspicions among governments of
the world that Washington's emphasis on immediate disarmament as critical in
the case of Iraq is really a false issue. These suspicions, to the extent
the peace movement in the U.S can emphasize and publicize them, should make
it harder for the Bush administration to start the war against Iraq.
Brief Thoughts for the Longer Term
The argument asserted earlier that preventing further nuclear and other WMD
proliferation is impossible because the U.S. refuses even to discuss
eliminating its own weapons of mass destruction cries out for serious
discussion and study of the "what-should-we-be-doing-that
we're-not-doing-now" variety. This single paragraph contains only a couple
of suggestions. First, anyone with the chutzpah to address the issue needs
to decide whether any possibility exists that the political climate in the
U.S. and elsewhere can be so changed that a multilateral, global, and
democratic solution to the world's WMD problem might be reached in the next
decade. Then, if the answer is yes, the person with the chutzpah has to come
up with a specific plan to achieve the multilateral solution. The author of
these words once tried to do that, and his specific plan is, for better or
worse, summarized here on CounterPunch in an earlier article. But if the
answer is no, here's another suggestion. Do nothing. Stop making it
difficult for any sovereign nation that wants them to acquire WMD. Do not
antagonize other nations and peoples by arguing that you, or I, are entitled
to WMD because we already have them, but you other folks, who don't have
them yet, are not entitled to them. The result will be the same in any case.
The process of spreading WMD around will just occur a little more rapidly.
Why irritate the rest of the world over something you can no longer prevent?
This is not written in jest. If today there is no general agreement that the
world needs a multilateral, global solution to nuclear and other WMD
disarmament, just possibly the increasing dangers of global chaos will bring
closer the time when such a general agreement does become possible.
counterpunch.org
Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of
the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central
Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South
Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA's
Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. His wife Kathy
also worked in the CIA, retiring in 1979. Since then she has been mainly
preoccupied by the issue of Palestine. |
