Singh-Bush's Bittersweet Victory

Indian Prime Minister Singh and US President Bush have worked together so long on a nuclear power deal that it seemed as silly as Israeli-Palestinian peace. But recent breakthroughs--a deal that is ready for the IAEA--have shaken things up.

A confidence vote came to parliament (which could have ousted the Prime Minister and forced a new parliamentary coalition to form) when the Communist party left the coalition over the US deal (citing something about imperialism on their way out the door), and Singh's future--as well as the deal itself--hung in the balance.

Congress won by a small margin. But accusations of bribery are rampant, opened flamboyantly by a BJH (opposition party) march into the well of parliament, literally waving money that they claimed had been given to them as bribes... only 2 hours before the vote. Sick and imprisoned members of the ruling coalition were pulled out for the vote, and some members of the opposition abstained or failed to arrive at all. The vote was certainly fishy, and Indian papers are very displeased. Indian politics has gotten ugly, even if the vote victory has given Singh the go-ahead on the nuclear deal. Parliamentary elections happen in May, which means he has but 9 months to recover from this PR mess and try to rally the country behind the Congress party, lest a strong socialist opposition take over and derail his economic growth plans for India.

From here, the deal has only a few months to be approved by the IAEA and the US Congress, before Bush leaves office. The move would be a jab in the opposite direction of the US' typical anti-proliferation strategy. India's development of a nuclear bomb made it--according to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty--a nuclear rogue state (along with Pakistan, maybe Israel), and the US has not required India to give up its weapons program for help in its peacful nuclear program. Surprisingly, Europe is not making a great fuss about this--possibly because Europe's diplomatic leadership are Brown and Sarkozy, and possibly because Europe wants to see a strong India counter a strong China. If Bush keeps Europe's support, the deal is likely to sqeak through before he leaves office.

But the bitterness left in the throats of Indians will not be forgotten quickly. The Opposition will try to use bribery allegations as a sign that the US is trying to use India as a pawn. If the Indian public takes these allegations to heart, the US is going to struggle keeping India along as an ally in the near future.

That said, the way the world is taking a liking to Mr. Obama, they may quickly change their mind if he becomes president.

The Wane of the Axis of Evil

Bush's controversial foreign policy may yield a curious victory when (or soon after) he leaves: the end of the Axis of Evil, both its official members and its often-called "junior" members.

The official list, if you have forgotten: Iran, Iraq, North Korea
The "Juniors": Libya, Syria

Iraq: Thanks to the so-far 5+ year war, regime change has certainly taken Iraq off the list, although it remains a different sort of problem.

North Korea: Thanks to effective carrot/stick diplomacy in six-party talks, North Korea has finally taken the first steps to denuclearizing, and may even return kidnapped Japanese to their homes. Kim Jong Il is still rather evil, but has come far enough from the 1987 terror attacks on Korean Air Flight 858 that "axis" no longer applies. Kim may have been convinced that cooperation is the best way for his country to move foward. Now that the US is taking it off the terror support list and lifting economic sanctions, it falls off the Axis.

Iran: Not off yet, but working on it. The Iranians and Americans are working on setting up diplomatic posts in each others' countires (a step down from Embassies, but not far). They have been talking quite a bit before this, but this move shows that the US is willing to hold out carrots to Iran as well as wave sticks over its nuclear program and operations within Iraq. The New Yorker is accusing the Bush administration of "preparing the battlefield" for war with Iran, but such accusations have come for years, and only diplomatic action has resulted. Iran is certainly not off the list, but is farther from the brink than before. Diplomatic pressure has worked, and Stratfor predicts they will cut a deal on their nuclear program with the next president, refusing to give Bush diplomatic credit (like between Carter and Raegan in the Embassy hostage crisis).

The little guys:

Libya: Libya has become a model of the deterrence strategy. The US showed that it meant business about dealing with WMD fears using regime change as a strategy, and the Libyan government responded by opening its operations to inspectors, and revealing a great deal of information about the Iranian, Pakistani, and North Korean programs. Libya and North Korea have been shown that past actions will be forgiven, as long as rogue nations are willing to start playing by Great Power rules.

Syria: Not yet absolved, but on its way. The US is using its presence in Turkey and Israel to influence negotiations between Israel and Syria quietly--Syria could not politically afford to admit the US is getting involved. But if Syria makes a peace deal with Israel--which will likely include a distancing from Iran and an undercutting of support for Hezbollah--it will surrender almost all issues with which the West contends. Israel is offering the Golan Heights--an important Syrian cultural site captured for strategic reasons when most of the Arab world simultaneously invaded Israel--as well as trade, and encouragement of Western powers to drop trade sanctions, in return.

Each of these five states has shown progress away from rogue behavior--Iran least. Bush has shown that his tough-guy diplomacy may fulfill many of its goals, though it has had high diplomatic, monetary, and human costs.

Cranking Up the Heat on Iran

No, this isn't deja vu. We just keep doing it. I'll keep this short:

Israel launched well over 100 fighters over the Mediterranean in what it openly publicized as a dress rehearsal for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran claimed that it was just psychological warfare, and probably is (as Stratfor notes, one does not publicize surprise attacks just before performing them), but this nonetheless means that Israel is happy to show a militarily aggressive posture towards Iran. Further, the Israelis noted that a nuclear "threshold" in Iran is likely to be crossed in late 2008 rather than 2009, as earlier predicted. We're not sure exactly what that threshold is, but the Israelis seem to have an idea that Iran is tumbling towards a nuclear weapons capability of some sort by the end of the year.

This all comes amid evidence found on a Swiss computer that the former A.Q. Khan weapons ring (that brought the Bomb to Pakistan and missiles to other countries) dealt with advanced missile-mounted nuclear technology (the blueprints appeared on the Swiss computer, though it's not clear how).

In addition, the EU has approved new sanctions against Iran, freezing bank accounts. France and Germany in particular have hardened their rhetoric against Iran.

And again, the US has called Iran out for shipping weapons to Iraq and training Shiite insurgent groups. The US is even publicizing a case of two of its own; two men that allegedly helped the Iranians acquire weapons.

It seems that a grand coalition of Western powers is in a quiet, unofficial agreement that Iran is a meance and must be dealt with. Bust most of the leaders of these countries have at least been aware of it for years. A clear media campaign is being waged by most of them--from military exercises to news stories to high-level meetings (and a strangely warm reception of Israel by a usually-cool EU). The UN is not a military option for the West--the Russians would clearly veto any military action in Iran. But the West seems to be preparing for something... and it is possible that they are not preparing for anything, but only trying to make it so clear that they are preparing for something that the Iranian government would crack. In the last parliamentary elections in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's party lost seats not only to the few moderate candidates that were able to run, but also to the more religiously conservative party (that aligns with the Supreme Council). Clearly, much of Iran worries over the brinksmanship being played by Ahmadinejad's executive... including the Supreme Council. If the West can emphasize this and try to worry the Council over imminent action, then it's possible a wedge might be successfully lodged into the Iranian government that Ahmadinejad's power to act will be dramatically reduced.

That, or the West is really sitting down and deciding that an airstrike needs to be launched against Iran. This seems so unwise that it is unlikely, but Iran's continued support of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Sadr, and its defiance of UN nuclear restrictions and sanctions shows a country that is risk-accepting, dangerous, and revisionist, with plans for domination of the region (through Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon). Most schools of International Relations (particularly the realist varieties) would agree that defiant states exhibiting such behavior, especially as they grow in size and strength, are the most dangerous.

The Enigmatic Syrian Reactor

In September 2007, rumors and scant pictures appeared of an Israeli bombing of a Syrian nuclear facility. Israel bombed a facility in Syrian soil, probably killing Syrian citizens, and Syria didn't say a word. Israel apparently had good evidence that the Syrians were building a nuclear facility, and didn't say a thing--at least publicly--to the IAEA, the US, or any media source.

The above image is a before-and-after of the facility; Syria quietly razed the site after it had been bombed, and has not put up a fuss. In fact, the first acknowledgment that the site could be nuclear comes from the US Intelligence Community, which claims to have video evidence (to be shown to Senate tomorrow) of North Korean officials assisting Syria in constructing the plant, which appeared to be capable of refining small amounts of plutonium to weapons-grade. Why the wait, the secrecy?

Sadly, there's no clear answer. This is certainly curious; Syria has a tendency to overstate Israeli wrongdoings, but stayed quiet here. Syria was probably simply trying to prevent too much public attention from bearing down on it for its building of the facility. But why did Israel insist on staying quiet, especially when it became increasingly apparent that the Israelis indeed carried out the attack? I simply don't know. Perhaps a deal with the Syrians had been made. Indeed, the Israelis have just recently leaked that they might be willing to return the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a peace agreement.

And on another funny timing note, Iran has recently agreed to give a detailed report to the IAEA about its nuclear program, and whether or not Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons (hint: the Iranians are going to say "no" to that). All this after Dick Cheney and Robert Gates both visited Oman--a friend of Iran--a few weeks ago, and after the US Navy parked the USS Cole back in the Persian Gulf coastal waters. Most interestingly, six-nation talks aimed at disarming North Korea's nuclear program just restarted. There's not enough out there to be sure of what all the timing means. Hopefully, the US decision to out the Syrians and North Koreans on their nuclear dealings comes as part of a greater political maneuver, but the timing is good enough that I would be genuinely surprised if it wasn't. Maybe the US is trying to pressure North Korea into disarming, or pressure the UN and the six-nations into bargaining harder. Maybe it is trying to pressure Iran by proxy, in particular as the US publicly blames Iran for supporting troublesome armed groups in Iraq (though Iran's official stance is supportive of disarming them). Maybe this is a golden opportunity to pressure both, and try to achieve a wrap-up of two of Bush's biggest foreign policy challenges in the last 8 years: Iraq and North Korea.

But we won't know for some time.

I Seem to Have Spoken Too Soon on Bush's Iran Policy

With the report that Iran had dismantled its nuclear weapons program in 2003, I figured Bush's thus-far successful Iran diplomacy would make a paradigm shift, hedging for future success. But it seems Bush is intent on reversing any progress recently made.

He's claimed that his Iran policy will stay the same, making myself (and hopefully others) grow skeptical. Bush's claim that Iran is dangerous is certainly true, but without an active nuclear weapons program, the only thing I can seem to directly fault Iran for is their meddling in Iraq. While I don't approve of such meddling in any way, it's understandable; Iran feels like the US is trying to surround it with pro-US allies and isolate it in the region, and Iran is pushing back in what ways it knows how. But Iran has neither the conventional nor nuclear capabilities to launch an offensive campaign. Iran's greatest threat lies in its ability to manipulate, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Shiite force in Iraq.

So why the tough stance? Does "no change in policy" mean war or airstrikes are still an option? And if so, why? I can't seem to find some other imminent threat that must be stopped, so does the Bush administration simply want to take down this regime to establish US hegemony in the Middle East?

This lack of policy shift is frustrating, and is likely to frustrate the allies that Bush had successfully collected to pressure and isolate Iran. Should he frustrate them too much, he will lose their support entirely, and his outward Iran toughness may be the very force that unravels his Iran policy.

The Chinese Nuclear Weapons Program

A paper I wrote that touches on the Chinese nuclear arsenal, China's proliferation practices, and how these threaten United States national security.

http://web.mit.edu/efogg/Public/chinanuclear.pdf

A brief summary:

The Chinese nuclear arsenal is technologically sound and very capable. The Chinese have nuclear warheads mounted on ballistic missiles capable of hitting the entire area of the United States. Also, some Chinese military personnel have implied or said explicitly that deploying nuclear weapons against the United States remains an option if the United States intervenes in a cross-strait (Taiwanese) conflict. But because of its investment in United States consumers, as well as the Asian supply line and world economy in general, the Chinese government is very likely to see the costs of nuclear warfare far too high for it to be a serious option.

But Chinese proliferation policy in the 1980's and 1990's has given ballistic missile and/or nuclear weapons technology to very dangerous states, including Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. These countries not only pose a significant nuclear threat to the United States and its allies, but may very well further spread nuclear or ballistic missile technology to other dangerous states or terrorist organizations. This would constitute a "Cascade of Proliferation," making nuclear technology nearly democratic, and making the world a significantly more dangerous place. Although China's nuclear proliferation policy has become much more responsible with time, it's past actions have armed many states dangerous to the United States. Any damage that the Chinese nuclear program might do to the United States may now be out of Chinese control.