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Archive for the ‘Nuclear weapons’ Category

By Jonathan Power

Both the West and Russia have a responsibility to make sure they don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as their quarrel over Ukraine continues. So much has been achieved since the end of the Cold War. Why throw it away because of Ukraine?

Ukraine is a marginal country. The tail should never be allowed to wag the dog. Ukraine has never really counted in world affairs in the 200 years of its existence. Only unthought through politics can inflate a misdemeanor into a capital offence.

Instead, front and centre of their minds, Russia and the Nato countries should think over what they achieved in the years immediately following the Cold War – nothing less than laying the bedrock of a global security system.

There were major agreements concluded to ensure control over nuclear and conventional weapons and to guarantee non-proliferation and liquidation of weapons of mass destruction. The UN began to play a much greater role in peacekeeping operations – of 49 deployments carried out before 2000 36 were carried out in the post Cold War 1990s. The number of international conflicts decreased quite significantly. Russia and China and other former socialist countries, despite differences in their political systems, were integrated into one global and financial economic system.

Several attempts were made to legally formalize the new balance of power – Read the rest of this entry »

By Jonathan Power

According to BBC World in a broadcast yesterday morning its considered opinion is that the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebels battle US-backed Ukrainian forces, is working. There are still too many skirmishes, too many guns and mortars being fired but the big guns are largely silent. President Vladimir Putin said the other day that both sides have been guilty of transgressing the cease-fire.

Both the Russians on one side and the US and Nato on the other have been playing with fire with their support of the two sides. And who suffers?- the ordinary inhabitants of the eastern provinces. However pro-Russian they were before all the fighting began they are now largely convinced the rebels killing in their name no longer represent them. The businesses they work for or own are working at half power or less. Unemployment has soared. Homes have been decimated. Pensions are unpaid. Hospitals find it increasingly hard, struggling to deal with extra patients and a curtailed drug supply.

In Moscow, among thinking people, it has become clear that Russia should have no interest in taking over large swathes of Ukrainian territory Read the rest of this entry »

Gareth Porter

By Gareth Porter

The most important factor in shaping US policy towards Iran is domestic politics – not Obama’s own geopolitical vision.

Since the start of the US nuclear negotiations with Iran, both Israeli and Saudi officials have indulged in highly publicised handwringing over their belief that such a nuclear deal would represent a fundamental strategic shift in US policy towards the region at the expense of its traditional alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But the Obama administration is no more likely to lurch into a new relationship with Iran than were previous US administrations. The reason is very simple: The US national security state, which has the power to block any such initiative, has fundamental long-term interests in the continuation of the policy of treating Iran as an enemy. Continued here!

Richard Falk

By Richard Falk

Editor’s note
This is a grand essay on the dimensions, history, structures of the Middle East/Palestine-Israeli-Western conflict over about 100 years. It is extraordinarily rich – but doesn’t cause the reader to drown in too many details. I highly recommend it to any student – young or old, journalist and politician – whose understanding of the issues may be based on the woefully biased, general account in Western mainstream media.
– Jan Oberg

Preliminary Observations

In this period when the centenary of the genocidal victimization of the Armenian people in 1915 is being so widely observed and discussed, it seems especially appropriate to call attention to the comparable victimization of the Palestinian people. This second story of prolonged collective victimization also received its jump start almost a century ago with the issuance by the British Foreign Office of the Balfour Declaration supporting the Zionist movement project of establishing a Jewish national home in historic Palestine.

The most striking difference between these two experiences of severe historical wrongs is that the Armenian people are seeking acknowledgement and apology for what was done to their ancestors a century ago, and possibly seeking reparations, while the Palestinian people may sometime in the future have the opportunity to seek similar redress for the past but now their urgent focus is upon liberation from present daily structures of acute oppression.

This Palestinian situation is tragic, in part, because there is no clear path to liberation, and the devastation of oppressive circumstances have gone on decade after decade with no end in view.

The political puzzle of the Israel/Palestine conflict continues to frustrate American policymakers despite their lengthy diplomatic engagement in the search for a peaceful future that satisfies both peoples. There are significant changes, of course, that have occurred as time unwinds.

Perhaps, the most crucial change has involved the gradual extension of Israeli control over virtually the whole of historic Palestine with American acquiescence. This coincides with a growing and more vivid awareness around the world of how much suffering and humiliation the Palestinian people have endured over the course of the last century, and the degree to which this frozen situation can be blamed on the unlimited willingness of the United States to deploy its geopolitical muscle on Israel’s behalf.

My approach to the Palestinian struggle reflects four points of departure: Read the rest of this entry »

By Jonathan Power

Just for five minutes while you read this column forget the supposed intention of Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Dwell on the less reported fact that there are already 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world of which 90% are held by the US and Russia.

During the Cold War barely a week went by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons. Not today. Yet most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not. When in 2010 President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one third the US Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be held to spending 355 billion dollars on updating and modernizing America’s massive arsenal.

There is an organization called Global Zero that boasts among its supporters former US secretaries of state and a deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with – off in the wings – support from Henry Kissinger. It has pushed to fast cut the level of nuclear weapons down to zero. But the rock won’t budge.

As soon as a deal is made over Iran’s nuclear industry, which could happen quite soon, let us return to putting things into perspective. Forget Iran’s supposed effort to build one bomb and focus on the other 16,000.

Recently, we have had wild talk Read the rest of this entry »

Gareth Porter

By Gareth Porter

The United States and Iran may have agreed on a vague framework for resolving remaining issues between them, including the lifting of sanctions, but the final stage of the negotiations will bring a diplomatic confrontation over the sequence and timing of lifting sanctions.

And the most difficult issue in the coming talks will be how the “Possible Military Dimensions” or “PMD” – the allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons work that have been at the center of the entire Iran nuclear crisis for several years – is to be linked to lifting certain UN Security Council sanctions.

On that linkage Iran will insist that its cooperation in providing access to the International Atomic Energy Agency must be reciprocated with the lifting of certain sanctions on an agreed-upon timetable, regardless of how long the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) takes to make up its mind and what judgment it renders, according to a source in close contact with the Iranian negotiating team.

The US “fact sheet” on the “parameters” of an agreement says, “All past United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted simultaneously with the completion by Iran of nuclear related activities addressing all key concerns,” and the list that follows includes “PMD.”

However, nothing was officially agreed on in Lausanne on how Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the PMD issue would be linked to sanctions relief, according to the source close to the Iranian negotiators. But the source said that Read the rest of this entry »

Johan Galtung

By Johan Galtung

Below 20 points that Johan Galtung now presents for discussion at his lectures and seminars:

1. Japanese Constitution Article 9 or something similar for all states: ‘__forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes’.

2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 28 criminalizing war: ‘a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized’

3. UD Article 3 “Everybody has the right to life, freedom and security of person” should also apply to cross-border aggression of any kind. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jan Oberg

By Gareth Porter

By Jonathan Power

Iran will find it easier to kill the nuclear bomb deal than will the Republicans in Congress. Why? Because the Republicans need some Democratic senators on their side to override a veto by President Barack Obama of a vote to bury the accord, whereas in Iran all that is needed is the decision of one man, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is not a dictatorship – voters, parliament and president carry enormous weight but when it comes to the very big decisions it is Khamenei who decides. He has already said there is “no guarantee” of a final deal with the world powers, the US, the EU, Russia and China, who agreed the deal. President Hassan Rouhani, a liberally minded man, has also said that Iran would not sign up unless sanctions were lifted “on the first day” of implementation.

There is enough evidence around to suggest that Khamenei is unhappy with the Americans. Soon after the accord was publicized after the marathon negotiations in Lausanne, he tweeted, “Hours after the talks the Americans offered a fact sheet (of explanation of the terms of the agreement) – most of it was contrary to what was agreed. They always deceive and breach promises.”

To understand where Khamenei is coming from we have to separate the question Read the rest of this entry »