Europe: Missile defense plan coolly received

The Financial Times relates how European representatives reacted to the US missile defense project in a NATO meeting, one of these days:

Europe cool on US missile bases plan

By Daniel Dombey in Brussels and Neil Buckley in Moscow

The US sought on Thursday to overcome scepticism among its Nato allies and hostility from Russia over its plans to locate missile defence bases in Europe – but failed to win a convincing show of support.

[..]

Thursday’s US presentation, spearheaded by Lt. Trey Obering, director of the missile defence agency, Eric Edelman, under-secretary of defence, and John Rood, head of the State Department’s non-proliferation bureau, argued that the proposed sites in Poland and the Czech Republic would allow the system to cover all but a handful of Nato allies.

The system, which is principally designed to protect the continental US, already uses bases in
California and Alaska. According to maps circulating among Nato officials, only Turkey and parts of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania would be outside the system’s protection once additional interceptor missiles were installed in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic.

[...]

But on Thursday some countries, including Turkey and Belgium, voiced worries that shooting down missiles could leave them at risk of radioactive debris, and also mentioned concerns about command and control of the new system, public opinion and the reaction of Russia.

Exactly the three points, I mentioned earlier here. But I do not think, that Europe should follow blindly Russia in its opposition. A continental protective system against space-born nuclear attacks is not wrong in itself. On the contrary: It would strengthen Europe's position in world politics and be a supplementary stimulus for European cooperation on security matters. It is a problem that only can be solved by the EU-countries themselves. Hiding behind the broadening Russian back, is a second-choice, weak, option.

Moreover, the Russians seem not to be so sure themselves, what they want exactly:

At a later stage of the meeting, Russia took approximately an hour to outline its objections – despite promises from the US to deepen co-operation through steps such as sharing radar images to help early warning.

In Moscow, Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, said he saw ”no grounds” for co-operation between Russia and the US on creating a joint missile defence system.

”We believe this system of strategic missile defence has, to put it mildly, a somewhat chimerical nature,” he said.

Mr Ivanov’s comments represented an apparent change in Russia’s position.
The first deputy premier had told the Financial Times in an interview earlier this week that Russia had proposed creating a joint anti-missile defence system to Nato five years ago, saying it could use Russian-made S-300 or S-400 surface-to-air missiles. ”We could ward off the threat this way,” he said.

But he also told the FT he believed there was no realistic possibility of Iran or North Korea having missiles that could reach Europe or the US in the foreseeable future.

In my opinion, it is either Europe, who provides itself with a sophisticated anti-missile system, or the US and Russia follow the first Ivanov suggestion and blend their systems for the European region. In the latter case, there will be no independent European discouraging system, and both superpowers will keep the upper hand in European security matters. A sub-option, that the Americans seem to prefer, is a no-blending, which leaves the Europeans divided, and the Russians outside. That is the worst one to envisage for Europe.

The UK, one of the two EU nuclear powers, seems to subscribe to this last option. It thinks apparently, that the American umbrella will protect it against Middle-Eastern or other attacks. Continental Europe is left without protection then. France, the other nuclear power, is momentarily too much occupied with its presidential elections. It may be expected, that it will offer its umbrella to other continental European countries, as it has done before. We can be sure, that it will attach its' conditions to such a move. If those conditions are acceptable to Germany, the other continental countries will have to join too.

Citations: Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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The Valerie Plame Affair endangers Europe

Starting with "An 21st Century Caligula..." on November 2, 2005, on the Legal Alien in New York blog, I followed the deployment of the 2003 Valerie Plame affair closely.
In my opinion, the primary target of the White House smearing campaign was not, as commonly thought, Plame's husband Wilson, but the liquidation of the CIA front store in Istanbul, led by Plame.
The CIA-Agency involved, was a branch of a CIA-created American firm. Its Istanbul bureau monitored Middle East nuclear efforts. That includes: Turkey, Israel, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. And, maybe, Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf States, as well as Egypt.

It is more than probable, that the Plame-Agency produced embarrassing information about Iraq: No nuclear program there, confirming the El-Baradei assessments. But the main embarrassment came from reports about Turkish-Israeli nuclear collaboration, that Cheney did not want to disturb, while the Iranian efforts to obtain a nuclear capacity should not, at that moment be too much published, for that would undermine the reasoning for an attack on Iraq.

Cheney saw a CIA conspiration against his designs. So, when Plame-spouse Wilson, former US ambassador to Iraq and presented as a hero in 1990, when Saddam Hussein took Western nationals as hostages, went public with a denial of Saddam's supposed deal with the Central African Republic for yellowcake, in June 2003, Cheney reacted as if the CIA were using the same methods as he does: His marginal remarks on the Wilson Op-Ed in the New York Times, revealed at the Libby trial, show a hysteric and revengeful psychopath, cought in his own intrigues.

Meanwhile, the CIA has been more or less dismantled. I have no reason to deplore that. The Agency was during 50 years across my way, in Holland and in Europe. But it's liquidation means also more freedom for the Bush cabal to manipulate information from abroad so as to lure the US into extremely dangerous adventures.

Juan Cole, the indefatigable Middle East Professor from the University of Michigan, daily blogger about Iraq and the Middle East region, produced Saturday an analysis, concise and clear, about the Plame affair. I left out the paragraphs about the details of the US juridical system. The main message is evident: The affair is not about an error of judgment, but it is about high treason. The US have been unnecessarily endangered by the Cheney intrigue. In my view, it is not by chance, that, in June 2003, Cheney obtained the (hitherto) presidential privilege of being allowed to mention undercover US agents.

Juan Cole:

Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: the Plame Affair

Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted destroyed in a fit of pique, was finally allowed to testify before Congress on Friday.
Some in the blogosphere are arguing that the outing of Plame Wilson was an impeachable offense. Defenders of Rove and Cheney say that if they did not know that Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover operative, then they did not break the law by trying to out her.
[..]
Moreover, they did know that Plame Wilson was involved in counter-proliferation efforts, including against Iran. By leaking her name with the intent that journalists such as Judy Miller publish it, they were conveying information about a CIA operation to Iran. That is high treason, even if they did not know she was covert. All they had to know is that she was trying to impede Iran's nuclear program, and that the Iranians did not know that that was what she was doing. You can't make her public without also letting the Iranians know.
[..]
It aided and comforted Iran to know that Valerie Plame Wilson and her dummy CIA corporation, Brewster Jennings & Associates, had been engaged in counter-proliferation efforts against it. Bush put Iran in the Axis of Evil, thus declaring it an enemy of the US.
Therefore, Rove and Cheney (and maybe Bush himself) gave aid and comfort to an enemy of these United States by a deliberate act of outing a CIA operative who was not known to Iran and whose cover and activities had not been.
That's treason. That warrants impeachment.

With an internally divided and short Democrat majority in Congress, an impeachment of the Vice-President, and the more so of the President, is not soon to be expected.
As a two-thirds majority in the Senate is necessary, this option is still far away.

The European Union, endangered by the liquidation of the CIA anti-proliferation outpost in Istanbul, should act on its own now. The nuclear configuration of the Middle East, with Israel at it's core, should be monitored daily, for it is on Europe's doorstep. US adventurism, launching Israeli (and Turkish?) nuclear strikes against Iran, would provoke a nuclear response against Europe, the South-East (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Turkey) in the first place.
Where is our plan?

And If an Iranian Nuclear Bomb Were Good for Peace?

Unstoppable proliferation
Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers: Russia, Turkey (through NATO warranties and through the special arrangements that were made during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961), Israel, Saudi-Arabia (which country is, in all probability, co-proprietor of the Pakistani bomb) and Pakistan. On top of all that, the US fleet in the Gulf is stuffed with nuclear arms.

The USA and its Western allies, having tolerated, if not supported, an

• Israeli development of a considerable nuclear capacity since the sixties,
• it's transfer to Apartheid South Africa in the seventies,
• the Indian bomb,
• the Pakistani bomb, and
• just some weeks ago, tacitly accepted the North-Korean capacity of building nuclear weapons, -

why do they make such a fuzz about the coming-out of a new small nuclear power?

Owning the Bomb works two ways: it generates arrogance and stabilisation of rogue regimes AND it learns them, paradoxically, to behave...
As we saw above, Iran is far from being the first country to introduce non-great power owned nuclear arms in the region. And it is not the first one, either, to threaten Israel with a nuclear response, if it uses its nuclear capacity against it or its allies. In 1973, the Soviet Union, when Israel considered nuking Egypt (Cairo), put its nuclear missiles in the Caucasus on alert and let that be known. The appeasing mechanism of mutual destruction risk, main element of the Cold War Years did its work then, too: No nuclear arms were used and a truce, later peace, was concluded between Israel and Egypt.

If it were true, that the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the ending of a bipolar world, would have made any proliferation (further proliferation) of nuclear capacities, suddenly extremely dangerous, why then, have the US and their nuclear armed allies not profited from the window of opportunity that existed during the Nineties, to implement the treaties and arrangements that existed at that time, to impose nuclear disarmament on the world, beginning with the existing nuclear powers? It was not impossible, as has been shown by the successful, UN controlled, nuclear disarmament of post-apartheid South Africa, the Ukraine and possibly other post-Soviet countries. (Libya is another case: it is essentially a security deal between the existing regime and the Americans, piloted by the UK, bypassing French, Italian and Russian ambitions in that region.)

The only answer to that, I am able to imagine, is, that nuclear armament has become, under certain conditions, a vector of stability and security, and, even, a condition for peace.

A Chirac "lapse" (?)
Some weeks ago, I found a confirmation of that, at first view, paradoxical proposition. It was here, in At Home In Europe (Week 5: Chirac on Iran, etc.), that I mentioned the "gaffe" of French president Chirac. The old fox, talking with American and British press, said that a limited number of Iranian nuclear arms, would do not much harm, but that it would, on the contrary force Iran into a more responsible policy. The day after, he made 'amende honorable' and slipped hastily back into the ranks of the Western diplomatic orchestra that puts (with some dissonances) maximum pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. But it had been said. It is an expression of European uneasiness with the US brinkmanship in the Near East. Maybe, it was not a "gaffe" at all, but a voluntary statement of difference, intended to stay alive during one day only, for a small nuclear power like France cannot allow itself to appear dissociated from mainstream "international community" diplomatic opinion.

Which, if I am right, would draw attention another confirmation of the chiraquian proposition, i.e.: that even an established nuclear power like France, can only tell the naked truth about nuclear policy in a way, that the Germans would call "klammheimlich".

Before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union: the same rules apply?
And, considering the question from the experiences out of the Cold War era: Why should not a more complex and layered system of guaranteed mutual destruction, as it has come up after the Cold War, work out in the same way as the bipolar one has done from 1945 to 1990?

Apparently, it does!
- We mentioned the Israeli-Egyptian peace of 1979.
- We could also mention the consequences of the nearly contemporaneous accession of India and Pakistan to nuclear armament: Both countries are working out serious deals now on their eternal differences (Kashmir), have already a series of smaller détente measures in place for traffic and commerce, and are working out a major strategic deal about a gas and oil pipeline from Iran to India, running through Pakistan. Some years ago, this was unthinkable.
- Between Turkey and Israel, two potential foes, it is about a certainty, that (secret) nuclear deals grease the harmonious military and economic (and strategic: water!) relations that exist between them.
- We could continue: Nixon's travel to China (1972), Russian-Chinese peace after having warred over the Amour region, etc.

It is absolutely not my personal preference for the world, this nuclear mutual deterrent system, but it works. Undeniably. I am even nearly convinced, that, if Saddam Hussein really had possessed the nuclear capacities that the US and the UK ascribed to him, the actual invasion of that country would not have taken place. But about Iraq, later.

Mr. Chirac, probably, spoke out of his own experience as leader of a minor nuclear power, when he mentioned the appeasing effects the possession of this kind of armament by a given country, has on its behaviour in international policy.

Daring to think the logics of multi-layered proliferation
Anyhow, having missed the opportunity in the beginning of the nineties, I see no way to halt a further proliferation of nuclear armament to a number of countries. We have to live with that, and dare to think of how it works and how to deal with that.

That is how we arrive at North Korea. Part of the famous "axis of evil" (Bush, State of the Union, 2002). Like Libya, the North-Korean regime intends to make a deal with the US, in order to guarantee its security and the continuation of its despicable system. Nuclear armament is the only asset it sees, to force the US into such a deal. That worked more or less fine during the Clinton era. A deal, acceptable to South Korea, Japan and China, was in the works. With the coming of George W. Bush, all that changed radically. Why?

I see two reasons for that.

1. The Star Wars Illusion in 2001
The first has to do with star wars, the idea (illusion?) that the US could escape the constraints put upon a 'normal' nuclear power, protecting themselves against nuclear attack with an interception shield (missiles that kill incoming warheads at sufficient distance from the US (mainland). In a deal with the former Soviet Union, the development of this kind of systems had been forbidden at the end of the Reagan era. But Bush revived this effort, and could do so, as the Soviet Union did no more exist, and Russia was not interested at that time, to keep up the deal (got probably something in return for abandoning its opposition). Installation of that "shield", would (will?) indeed allow the president of the US to use nuclear arms, without the possibility of retaliation.

• (At least, not on the US mainland - The risk for allies located elsewhere, would substantially grow: A nuked Iran, not being able to reach the US, could, for instance, retaliate in stead in Israel, like Saddam Hussein symbolically did in 1991 with his Scuds. The adventurous British, Dutch, Polish, Danish, etc. policies like we have seen them in Iraq, could even endanger the whole European Union, in such a case, the American shield being unable to protect them, even if they have missiles in Lithuania and Poland. In the last case, a retaliation on Europe becomes even more likely!)

The existence of the "shield" would have allowed the US to forbid whomever they wanted to have nuclear arms, and thus policing the world without fear for retaliation: The illusion of the 'American Century' manifesto of the neoconservatives (1997). The first months of the Bush presidency (2001) were nearly exclusively dedicated to the development of this main geopolitical revolution in the making. Many witnesses confirm this, in relation to the lax treatment of the Al Qaeda warnings. Terrorism was not an issue. The Shield would change everything.

In retrospective, Bush acted in January 2002, as if he had already such a shield ready for use. This was to become one of his major errors: He did not intimidate Iran and North Korea. On the contrary: North Korea broke the Clinton-deal and rushed to make its own weapons. It was only in 2002, that Iran seriously started to create the conditions for producing nuclear armament of his own. Other countries may also have accelerated their efforts to become nuclear powers because of this new US policy.

CONCLUSION: The first reason for the US abandoning the use of balancing the nuclear terror of mutual destruction between regional nuclear powers, was, if I am right, the illusion of being (soon) protected against (nuclear) retaliation, abandoning at the same time its allies to greater risks of becoming victims of that. The US would go it alone. What they did. Ask the NATO allies who offered a broad coalition after 9/11, and were harshly rebutted.

2. Underestimating China and other not-so-second-rate nuclear powers
The second reason is to be found in China. A first warning came even before 9/11. An American spy plane was forced to land on Chinese soil (the island of Hainan, facing the Vietnamese coast). All its installations were practically intact. First efforts to intimidate the Chinese at returning plane and crew, proved useless. Bush had to accept the Chinese conditions and to acknowledge, that Chinese technological progress, backed by a nuclear capacity, was something to reckon with. But not all consequences of that were thought out in Washington. Especially concerning North Korea. Apparently nobody in Washington got the idea, that North Korean nuclear armament possibly was not as much directed against the USA as against their big Chinese neighbour. So, during six years, the US continued to do the 'dirty work' of protecting China against an independence-loving neighbour and helping its ambitions for regional domination, menacing North Korea, isolating and starving it.
Very recently, the State Department announced a sudden turnabout in the relations with an -in the mean time nuclearily armed- North Korea. Everything is going to be smooth. (If Mr. Cheney will not ultimately have his way.) A possible reason for this may be the successful interception operation China executed recently of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Shit! The US, if they will ever have their shield, they will not be the only ones to have it. The Chinese too... Which means, that it is of still more importance to the US than before, to dispose of a - be it a small one - nuclear power on China's doorstep! (North-) Korean warheads will be able to reach Beijing (at some hundreds of kilometers from the Jalu River), where American intercontinental missiles will fail.

CONCLUSION: The second explanation for the unreasonable Bush politics on local nuclear balances might be their underestimation of the capacities of other nuclear powers. This seems to have been repaired in the North-Korean case.

IRAN
Will such a turnabout also occur in the Iranian question? Difficult to say.
There are reasons enough for it. A nuclear Iran would help to reign in exaggerated Russian ambitions in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. It would feel free of the risk of Israeli operations like the 1981 one on the nuclear reactor in Baghdad, and thus become more open to the necessary Middle East overall peace deal as proposed by the Arab countries. To the east of Iran, in Afghanistan, hidden (or uncontrolled) Pakistani help to Sunni extremists suppressing the large Shiite minority in that country, would be discouraged, and, more in general, one of the main aims of NATO intervention in that country (curbing Pakistan-supported talibanwise tribal criminality) would come nearer, without having to loose another war against local insurgents.

Against it? Yes: Iran would control the Straits of Hormuz completely. A danger to oil supply? I think that this capacity does not alter much to the existing situation. The interest of Iran with ongoing oil export is much bigger than it could gain by blocking half of Saudi-, all of Kuwaiti-, 60% of its own- and 70% of Iraqi oil exports. And, yes, the execrable Mullahs' regime would stabilise itself somewhat more. In the beginning. But as much as the external enemies will decline in number and in risk, the strong democratic and liberal tendency among the Iranian people will have more chances to gain the upper hand against the theocracy.

Finally: IRAQ
The only real victim of an Iranian accession to nuclear armament, would be: IRAQ.
The centuries-old rivalry between Arabs, Kurds and Persians would get unbalanced in favour of the last ones. Only twenty years ago, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein (with American help, it is true), was a virtual victor over Iran in the horrible war both countries fought then against each other. The balance of power between the two countries would become nonexistent. That balance is one of the pivotal givens of regional stability. Bush' father still understood that well, when he decided in 1991, to keep Iraq alive, within its historical borders, taking advice from the Saudis. Son has tried to do it his way, with the consequences we see at this moment. Even without nuclear arms, Iran is more and more setting its law in Baghdad. With nuclear arms, this tendency will only be stronger.

The only solution to this, is a very ironical one: Let the Americans help the Iraqis to build a limited nuclear capacity of their own, thus doing the work, Saddam Hussein was prevented to do, and what, not having succeeded, but nevertheless accused of, was reason for murdering him.
It would be a monumental good-bye present by the US to suffering Iraq! (And it would not cost any more American life there...)

But, theoretical as my reasoning may be, and, however much I wish all nuclear armament to disappear from the earth, I believe that, geopolitically, given the unstoppable proliferation, my idea is sound. History goes from one unimaginable irony to another. It is unpredictable.

Which should not stop us thinking.

(This text is the third version of a commentary I published in German to a blogpost by BigBerta on Iran and the war that prepares itself against it [in DE] on February 25, 2007. In spite of what commonly happens, the text was not lost in the subsequent translations and rearrangements: The second German version in In Europa Zu Hause (2.25.07) is more balanced than the first, while the French version in L'Europe Chez Soi and in Toto Le Psycho (cross posted) of the same date, is better still. This English version here, of February 27 (also to be published in Legal Alien in New York), pleases me most. A Dutch version (upcoming), in In Europa Thuis) will, hopefully, crown this unusual excursion of mine into nuclear geopolitics.)

Week 5: Chrac on Iran; French internal presidential struggle; Europe and the Near East.

Chirac and the Iran Bomb
The best commentary I have seen on the incident around French president Chirac's declaration on Iran, is in @foe (A Fistful of Euros) by Alex Harrowell: Chirac has a transient dishonesty malfunction (4.2.07). The title is more cynical than the content is.
Basically, the author says, Chirac was right in what he said first, i.e., that Iran, having one or two bombs, wouldn't be a disaster:

"This is a pretty basic statement of nuclear deterrence, with the further point that in a sense, having one or two nuclear bombs makes you weaker than having zero nuclear bombs but the capacity to make them. Once you fire the one bomb, you have no further deterrent, and you’re definitely going to be nuked."

For, as he says, The US, Israel, but also France, Britain and Russia have the capability to retaliate. And do not forget Pakistan and India. He also mentions Jordan, Egypt and Saudi-Arabia as countries who have perhaps already nuclear capabilities, or who should be able to have them within short notice. Especially S.-Arabia, that, probably, financed the Pakistani bomb, could buy it (or, already have bought it) instantly.

It is strange however, that he forgets Turkey. One cannot suppose, that the Turks, surrounded in the West, the North and the South (Israel) by nuclear powers, and seeing them coming up in the East, should not have thought at obtaining an independent nuclear deterrent for themselves. It is more than possible, that the CIA frontstore in Istanbul, manned by the team of Valerie Plame, was observing those efforts and their possible collusion with Israel. It makes the 2003 denunciation of Plame by Cheney & Co. all the more suspect.

Was it part of the French presidential candidates' dance around the poll position?
Remains the enigma, if it was the old fox Chirac, who staged a short incident in order to see what happened and at the same time stress, for a moment, the independent French thinking, or, if it is senility that has overtaken the outgoing president?

The Financial Times, echoing US analysing, opts for the "senility" explanation. It goes as far as to discuss the legal (constitutional) possibilities of declaring the French president "inapt" and to be replaced by the French Senate president. But it also admits that it might have been a moment of undiplomatic "honesty":

Yet most experts said Mr Chirac’s gaffe sounded less like a mental aberration and more like an unguarded moment of honesty. “Jacques Chirac said what many experts in the world are saying, even in the US,” said Hubert Védrine, former Socialist foreign minister.

“He sounded like a man who knows it is almost over for him and was saying what he really thinks,” said Patrick Moreau Defarges, analyst at the French institute of foreign relations.

The worry for some analysts is whether Mr Chirac’s new free-speaking style will do more damage to France’s diplomatic relations in the short time left before his expected departure from office. “These were very irresponsible comments for a head of state to make,” said Mr Moreau Defarges.

But I bet on my first supposition. Chirac is subtly undermining his rival Sarkozy's position. He did so, with the apparently staged homeless manifestations at Christmas and his subsequent order to give them housing. That was a defeat for Sarkozy. Diverging so manifestly from the US-imposed policy regarding Iran, is another blow to Sarko, who suggests regularly a more "Atlantic" approach in international policy. On both issues, Chirac can be sure, to have the French public opinion at his side.

If I am right, one may expect a third intrigue from the old fox against Sarkozy on the economic field, where he could force the latter, as a member of the government until the end of March, to execute some symbolic anti-market measure.

And the French Socialists and their candidate Ségolène Royal? - They are nowhere, at this moment. They had no reply on the homeless issue and still less on the Iran bomb question.

Europe, Israel and the Bomb.
We should also link this to the Herzliya conference held recently in that Israeli bathing resort. There, a subtly composed mix of neoconservatives and mainstream US politicians have been brainwashed over the Iranian Bomb and its' dangers for Israel. There was no effort, as far as I have seen, to imply a significant European audience into this conference. An appeasing German, British or French intervention has been avoided. All seems to be set, to obtain a maximum US belligerence in face of Iran. Nonetheless, an Iranian nuclear capacity regards directly Europe and the Russians. Much more directly than the Americans.
In my opinion, this is a costly error, seen from the Israeli point of view. Europe and most of the rest of the world, will not accept another Iraq-like scenario. I am even sure, that the orthodox conservative mainstream US community is more and more against this eventuality. Israel should, in my view, accept, that it has to compose with its neighbours in order to safeguard its existence, and not rely on its nuclear blackmailing capabilities.

Could it be, that Chirac, who thinks that he might have found a restoration of French influence in the Near East through the shift of power in Lebanon and the (outgoing) French commandment of the UN troops in South Lebanon, was vexed, that he was not heard in Herzliya?

The growing European weight upon the Near and Middle East, caused by the American-British failure in Iraq and the dissociation of Turkey from the US policies, as well as the Afghan morass, doesn't express itself diplomatically, commonly and promptly. That is why, I think, an incident like this, ridiculous at first view, could produce itself.

On of the stumblings that will unheroically, but inevitably, lead to a common EU foreign policy.