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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (71544)	9/18/2004 4:08:40 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793986

Barnett's comments this weekend. No grand jury yet on Iran and its nuke effort •"Nuclear Agency's Action on Iran Falls Short of U.S. Goal," by Craig S. Smith, New York Times, 18 September 2004, p. A3. The U.S. fails again in its ongoing attempts to get the International Atomic Energy Agency to bump up its concerns to the next level: the "grand jury" that is the UN's Security Council. Instead the IAEA is going to issue more "calls" to Iran to stop enriching uranium and answer the agency's outstanding questions of where exactly it's going with its nuclear power programs. For now, the Europeans favor this softer approach, because they fear having the matter put to a vote in the UNSC. Not a bad stand on their part, given the situation in Iraq and with North Korea. Only so much the system can handle at any one time, which makes Iran's purposefully move in this direction a good strategic call on their part. There were always trade-offs with going into Iraq, and if you have to make a call on "who next?" it's definitely North Korea before Iran, simply to relieve the human suffering and repression there, which is far greater than in Brezhnev-era-like Iran, where the revolution is pretty much a faded relic of the past. So, deciding to go into Iraq may well have bought us a nuclear Iran. How bad is that trade? Not as bad as you would think. Having two nuclear powers in the region (Israel and Iran) would probably trigger some movement toward a more permanent solution for the Israeli-Palestinian Authority stand-off. Why? Iran won't feel itself secure enough on regional security matters until it has nukes. Teheran has watched the U.S. dismember Afghanistan on its right and Iraq on its left, and so the mullahs are feeling mighty nervous right now, even as they plot their designs on the Shiite portion of the increasingly tripartite Iraq. They want the nukes because they believe it will make them serious security players in the region—somebody who can either be ignored nor contained by external powers like the U.S. or the Europeans. This scenario pathway is probably inescapable now, but that only means the U.S. will need to get back to some sort of détente-like pathway with Teheran following our national election. This was in the works prior to 9/11, and it will likely have to be resurrected by whoever wins in November. Not because they would want to, per se, but because North Korea will probably take precedence and the system simply can't handle another big showdown in the Gulf so long as Iraq continues to burn. Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 02:51 PM NATO wants a winning hand before committing any more to Afghanistan •"NATO Runs Short of Troops to Expand Afghan Peacekeeping," by Craig S. Smith, New York Times, 18 September 2004, p. A3. A year ago NATO committed to setting up provincial military bases around Afghanistan in order to extend the security rule of the governing coalition led by Karzai into the previously ungovernable hinterlands. As of today, almost nothing has happened. Right now it is estimated that 80% of all Afghans live in areas beyond the control of the Kabul-based central government, which makes the planned national elections pretty iffy. Because NATO is begging its members for troops and receiving little in return, it looks like most of the country will be without any external security forces helping maintain order during the elections. This sort of half-assed effort by NATO is sending all the wrong signals. They have committed—on paper—to staying in Afghanistan at least through 2009, leaving behind a trained indigenous military of 70k men, but so far only about 15k have been trained and there isn't even enough NATO troops to make the upcoming national elections look like a sure thing. Right now NATO has 27k peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo, but because the Sys Admin effort there has been equally weak (after all these years), European countries are wary of stealing from that Peter to pay this Paul. What is holding up NATO is not the money or the manpower so much as the fear of failure. And watching the U.S. effort in Iraq does not give them any reason to suck it up any time soon, because it seems to say to Europe: If you do well anywhere, the U.S. will just rush ahead and create more jobs for you. In effect, the NATO reluctance to do more in Afghanistan is a no-confidence-vote for our occupation efforts to date in Iraq. This is why I believe the generation of a truly robust Sys Admin-type force within the U.S. military is THE big bottleneck in this global war on terrorism. We will not move forward until we generate this capability and convince our allies throughout the Core (and not just Europe), that we mean business in shrinking the Gap. No winning hand, no coalition support. It's that simple. Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 02:50 PM You can't join the Core if your president is also your uniformed military leader •"Many See Musharraf Keeping Army Post to Cement Power," by David Rohde and Salman Masood, New York Times, 18 September 2004, p. A2. A sure sign you are stuck in the Gap: your leader is both president and top general. If you are afraid to rule politically without direct, uniformed control over the military, then you are not running a stable national system, but one always just a few steps away from a military coup (which, of course, is how Musharraf came to power five years ago). Military leaders have been "saving" republics like that going all the way back to Julius Caesar, and the historical record is very bleak indeed.