James Landrith is...Taking The Gloves Off: syndicated

left-libertarian blogger, publisher, Marine and civil liberties activist

 

Turkey's Policy Toward Iran Is Worth Emulating
June 16, 2010
Ivan Eland

The sad truth is that if Iran wants a nuclear weapon, it will likely eventually get one. So the United States should quit wasting valuable political capital beseeching, threatening, and horse-trading with China, Russia, and other UN Security Council members to incrementally ratchet up likely futile multilateral economic sanctions against Iran.

Economic sanctions rarely work at coercing the target nation when anything but modest goals are desired and can drag the sanctioning nation(s) and the target into an unexpected war. The most universal, comprehensive, and grinding sanctions in world history in the early 1990s failed to compel Saddam Hussein to withdraw his invasion forces from Kuwait. And getting Saddam out of Kuwait was a more modest goal than coercing a country to give up its quest for the “ultimate deterrent.” Furthermore, multilateral sanctions on Iran will never be that strong because Russia and China have substantial commercial relations with Tehran and have repeatedly watered down U.S. attempts for stronger measures. Even with stronger measures, sanctions often erode over time, as the target simply pays people to evade the sanctions.

When the sanctions erode or have no success in coercing the usually unachievable policy outcome from the target, political pressure often exists to escalate to war. In 1991, when the sanctions failed to budge Saddam’s forces from Kuwait, pressure for war increased and it eventually occurred. In the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, one of the George W. Bush administration’s arguments was that the multilateral sanctions on Iraq, still in place, had eroded over time. In 1989, the George H.W. Bush administration imposed stringent financial sanctions on the regime of Panama’s Manuel Noriega. When those didn’t work, the typical pressure for stronger measures led to a U.S. invasion.

Thus, Turkey, which voted against more sanctions on Iran in the Security Council, is prescient when it fears that such measures could eventually lead to greater pressure for war. But would an aerial attack by Israel or the United States foil Iran’s nuclear program. Probably not. Neither Israel nor the United States likely knows where all the targets are located. Iran has already been caught hiding nuclear facilities. So at most, air strikes would only delay the program and make Iran more determined to eventually get a weapon. After all, the greatest deterrent to enemy attack in a dangerous neighborhood is a nuclear weapons capability.

Invading on the ground would be the only way to make sure that Iran never obtained a nuclear device. After the fiasco of invading Iraq (and the continuing bog in Afghanistan), invading the larger, more mountainous, more populous, and more zealous Iran likely would be an even bigger nightmare.

Even though U.S. policymakers seem to be oblivious, or at least ambivalent, to these stark realities, Iran’s neighbor Turkey is not. The Turks are of the opinion that a more cooperative approach from Iran’s neighbors might make Tehran stop short of making a bomb. In other words, Iran might feel secure enough to halt at developing technology that would enable it to construct a weapon on short notice—much as Japan has already done.

Whereas the Obama administration’s idea of trying to build bridges with Iran is “stop your nuclear program and we’ll give you a bunch of stuff or continue at the risk of more sanctions and war,” Turkey, cognizant that previous rounds of sanctions have failed to dissuade Iran’s nuclear program and tired of incurring the costs for U.S. aggressive behavior in its region, is attempting to make Iran feel secure enough that the Iranians will stop short of getting a nuclear weapon. The Turks believe that treating Iran with respect will make them have something to lose by getting a nuke. The United States should end its economic and military saber-rattling and adopt Turkey’s much less belligerent posture.

In the end, with Israel’s 200–400 nuclear weapons and Sunni Arab states’ hostility to Shi’ite Iran, the Turkish, and any American, attempt to make Iran feel more secure may fail. But it’s worth a try, because it’s the only good option left.

If all else fails, the good news is that Iran is no erratic North Korea and can be more easily deterred from using or selling any nuclear weapons that it might obtain by America’s globally dominant nuclear arsenal of thousands of weapons.

New from Ivan Eland! THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed (Updated Edition) Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century. In The Empire Has No Clothes, Ivan Eland, a leading expert on U.S. defense policy and national security, examines American military interventions around the world from the Spanish-American War to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Learn More »»

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (7) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 308

Will Oil Drilling Become a Pipe Dream?
Fallout from Gulf spill could trigger business fears, suppress recovery
June 16, 2010
Robert Higgs
Washington Times

If President Obama’s Oval Office speech made one thing clear, it is that his administration and the activists who back it view the Gulf oil spill as simply an opportunity to advance their pre-existing agenda—which has nothing to do with cleaning up the Gulf, protecting the fragile coastal environment or fostering the region’s economy.

The Obama administration’s May 27 order to stop all deep-water exploratory drilling in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico for six months, pending the report of a commission investigating the causes of BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident, is a case in point.

Public and political reaction to the devastating oil release in the Gulf has revitalized a coalition of environmental and anti-energy lobbies that oppose not only deep-water drilling, but all offshore oil production and, in some cases, all use of fossil fuels. As usual, political opportunists have been quick to seize the moment.

“You don’t want to let a good crisis get away,” declares Athan Manuel, director of lands protection in the Sierra Club’s legislative office. The organization is urging a permanent moratorium on new offshore drilling.

Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, disputes industry claims that shallow-water drilling is much safer than deep-water drilling. The center wants the existing six-month moratorium extended to all offshore drilling.

Such lobbying already has born fruit. On June 8, the administration issued new safety standards for shallow-water drilling. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “as many as 50 shallow-water drilling rigs that employ about 5,000 workers may need new permits in the next six weeks under the administration’s new review.”

According to Vikki Spruill, president and chief executive of the Ocean Conservancy, Mr. Obama’s moratorium is merely the beginning: “the first step needed in broader reform of a broken system.”

Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists believes that the BP accident, along with the recent deadly explosion in a West Virginia coal mine, has “shifted the [political] ground,” putting opponents of oil, gas and coal production in much stronger position to obtain government restrictions on such forms of energy production.

Members of Congress already have held hearings on the BP disaster in the Gulf, and many more will follow as grandstanding legislators seek the publicity and positioning such high-profile events make possible. New laws and regulations are virtually certain to result from the hasty legislative activity. No one knows what the legal and regulatory situation will be a year from now.

Environmentalists and others seeking tighter restrictions on offshore drilling express no concern for the tens of thousands of people who will be put out of work directly or for the even greater number—the retailers, restaurant employees, auto dealers, owners and employees of countless small businesses of every description—who will be harmed indirectly.

Nor do the anti-industry factions shed any tears for the billions of dollars in lost capital that millions of shareholders in a wide variety of companies will suffer. Many anti-energy groups display little appreciation of the extent to which modern economies depend pervasively on the use of fossil fuels and petrochemical products.

The regulatory and legislative fallout from the oil spill could be highly damaging to the economy even if it were confined to the energy sector, because that sector is joined at the hip with every other part of the economy.

But a greater threat is that environmental and other anti-industry groups will parlay their windfall clout into more far-reaching political victories. They might, for example, steer the public’s anger over Gulf oil pollution into the ongoing crusade to suppress carbon-dioxide emissions.

When this sort of political force presses against such a wide front, it creates “regime uncertainty” in the economy—a prevalent fear among investors and businesspeople about the future security of their property rights and their ability to reap adequate returns on risky long-term investments.

Once before, during the latter phase of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, between 1935 and 1939, the government’s actions brought about substantial regime uncertainty. The effect was to discourage long-term private investment, delaying full recovery from the Great Depression. For the 11 years from 1930 through 1940, as a whole, net private investment was negative. Not until 1941 did annual net private investment exceed its 1929 amount.

The oil pollution in the Gulf is already hurting residents, workers and business owners and causing heartbreaking damage to marshlands, beaches and the wildlife that inhabits the area’s waters and wetlands. Let us hope the terrible situation will not be politically leveraged into measures that cause even greater damage to the national economy.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (8) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 357

The World Cup
June 16, 2010
Alvaro Vargas Llosa

WASHINGTON—The World Cup kicked off in Johannesburg last week, and once again the connection between politics and soccer has tongues wagging.

There is some exaggeration about the effect of triumph and failure on governments. Brazil’s stunning loss to Uruguay in the 1950 final held in Rio de Janeiro did not harm President Gaspar Dutra. The victory some months later by his successor, Getulio Vargas, was unrelated to the soccer debacle. The fact that Italy won the 1982 World Cup held in Spain did not help Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini, the first non-Christian Democrat of the postwar era, whose party was expelled from power soon after the national team’s triumph.

More than any other sport, the soccer World Cup generates “upward mobility.” Upsets are frequent. North Korea defeated Italy in 1966, Algeria beat West Germany in 1982, Cameroon became a sensation in 1990.

The fact that some developing countries—such as Argentina—are among the top soccer teams alters the traditional political and economic pecking order, at least for a few weeks, every four years. The kind of reshuffling of international hierarchies that the G-20 group of nations is trying to generate nowadays, so far without much success, really takes place at the World Cup, an event whose audience is comparable to the Olympics.’

The soccer tournament turns on its head a world order still dominated by the United States. Although the World Cup attracts an American television audience similar to what Major League Baseball draws and soccer there is the top recreational sport for children, the game is still relatively minor as a spectator sport. Therefore its weight in the domestic sports-related economy is not huge.

However, soccer is a tool that American politicians increasingly are using as a way to connect with Hispanics, now an electoral force. The fact that Vice President Joe Biden attended the World Cup opening ceremony and the U.S. team’s first match against England, and that Obama has announced he will follow the tournament with interest, has little to do with foreign policy. It is a question of domestic demographics—and therefore politics.

The World Cup, meanwhile, gives Europe a strange sense of comfort in these troubled days, allowing it to maintain an illusion of superiority no longer sustained in other fields. Europe is a decadent political and economic power compared to the rise of Asia. The European Union’s $14 trillion economy, while close in size to that of the United States, largely props up a barely sustainable welfare state. But at the World Cup, where Europeans often excel, China, with an economy nearly three times larger than Germany’s, is entirely irrelevant: It failed to even make the tournament after losing to Iraq in the qualifiers. The World Cup, then, has an effect on Europeans similar to that of Britain’s Commonwealth of Nations or France’s (BEG ITAL)La Francophonie(END ITAL): It preserves the memory of long- gone imperial greatness.

International soccer is also a catalyst for trends related to globalization. More than other sports, it has brought down barriers to the flow of people as well as capital, goods and services. Virtually no Latin American, African or Central European squad has a majority of its top players playing in domestic leagues. Over half of the non-Europeans competing in South Africa this year are playing professionally in Europe—mostly in Spain, Italy, Germany and Britain. The Ivory Coast’s national team has 20 players in Europe. Just as interestingly, only four of the 23 players on the U.S. team play at home.

The influence of these “foreigners” in the communities that host them goes far beyond sports. The attachment of millions of fans to local-team foreign players who bring them joy during the year has some meaning at a time when the contradictory forces of globalization and nationalism, of increased cross-border exchanges and nativist or xenophobic reactions, are at work. For millions, these players are the most direct connection to cultures, languages and customs from faraway lands.

The World Cup will bring a needed relief to nations exhausted by the psychological consequences of the economic crisis. South Africa is a fitting host. The corruption and increasing authoritarianism of the African National Congress notwithstanding, it symbolizes the emergence of countries—including a much-improved South Africa itself, now boasting the world’s 18th largest stock exchange—that are eager to move ahead.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (6) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 296

UN Human Rights Council Discusses Secret Detention Report

by Andy Worthington, June 14, 2010

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation

On June 3, unnoticed by most of the U.S. media, the UN Human Rights Council held an interactive dialogue to discuss the “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” prepared by Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, Martin Scheinin, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Shaheen Ali, the chair of the Working Group on arbitrary detention, and Jeremy Sarkin, the chair of the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

The study (A/HRC/13/42) was published on February 19, 2010, and is available here as a PDF. An advance unedited version of the report was published on January 26, which I discussed in an article at the time, entitled, “UN Secret Detention Report Asks, ‘Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?’”

The report focused on 66 countries involved in the secret detention of terrorist suspects since 9/11. Many of these — including European countries, Canada, Australia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Pakistan — were tied in with the activities of the United States, in a crucial section of the report, which collated information about U.S. policies involving “extraordinary rendition” and secret prisons, focusing on the most up-to-date information about the 98 prisoners held in the CIA’s secret prisons, and the many dozens of others subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture in other countries, where they were sent by the CIA.

In addition, 25 other countries — including Algeria, China, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe — were also included, in a section analyzing the nature and scope of secret detention practices around the world

In my article in January, I also explained that, in the report, the experts concluded that, “On a global scale, secret detention in connection with counter-terrorist policies remains a serious problem,” and that, “If resorted to in a widespread and systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity.” Moreover, as IPS explained on June 3, the report also notes that many countries, citing national security concerns, which are “often perceived or presented as unprecedented emergencies or threats,” resort to secret detention, even though “International law clearly prohibits secret detention, which violates a number of human rights and humanitarian law norms that may not be derogated [from] under any circumstances.”

In the months since the report was published, its progress towards discussion in the Human Rights Council was almost derailed in March, when Russia, a number of African countries, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference objected to it, claiming that the experts “violated the [UN] code of conduct and acted outside [their] mandates.” These criticisms, which delayed the discussion of the report until June 3, prompted Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, to condemn them as “a totally political consideration” and to point out:

We are independent experts — the eyes and ears of the council — and we provided it with a report drawing their attention to a very serious worldwide problem based on a great deal of work over the past year. Secret detention is not just a minor human rights violation; it’s a crime, a major human rights violation.… I am seriously concerned by the way states at the Human Rights Council are treating their own independent experts. The council should stop criticizing its own experts and start taking human rights seriously and collaborating with its independent experts to address major human rights violations by the states that are responsible.

As a result of this dissent, the discussion of the report two weeks ago was something of a triumph, although it remains to be seen whether the Human Rights Council will respond positively to the experts’ call for a resolution on secret detention, demanding “explicit legislation prohibiting secret and other unofficial detention, the mandatory keeping of detention records and independent inspection of all detention sites,” as well as the immediate closure of all secret detention facilities, and compensation for those subjected to secret detention.

Manfred Nowak told the Human Rights Council, “We think this is enough evidence that the council should take action,” and in the debate the experts stated that “secret detention should be explicitly prohibited along with all other forms of unofficial detention,” and noted, “In almost no recent cases have there been any judicial investigations into allegations of secret detentions and practically no one has been brought to justice.”

After the debate, Martin Scheinin, the Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, said it was “clear from the debate that the issue had not been brushed away despite months of delay,” as the Swiss website Expatica described it. Speaking to journalists, Scheinin said, “I don't think the Human Rights Council can ignore the need for inquiries at domestic level, that will necessarily be part of the package.”

Despite the experts’ hopes, Deutsche Welle noted that a detailed questionnaire that experts sent to the UN's 192 member countries was only answered by 44 of those countries, and, moreover, “Of these, not one admitted to the existence of secret prisons. The report's authors depended on independent sources for their investigation and many countries denied them any kind of access to relevant materials or sources.”

The article also noted, “During the debate, China, Russia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Algeria, and other African nations denied that any secret detention facilities existed on their territory.” Revisiting the complaints they made when the report was first published, “They accused the report's authors of sloppy research, of overstepping their mandate and of compiling the report without being commissioned to do so by the UN Human Rights Council.” A sign of the kind of dissent that surfaced can be found in comments made by Syria’s representative, who, despite the country’s well-known human rights abuses in its prisons, stated, “We are concerned at the unprofessional way in which the report was written and presented. The report makes use of unverified allegations by non-credible parties and presents them as fact.”

Nevertheless, reflecting on the discussion, Martin Scheinin told IPS, “It went better than expected. The report has been very controversial and now there appears to be acknowledgement that the issue is serious enough not to be trivialized by procedural filibustery.” He added that a number of countries who were originally opposed to the report, like Egypt, “chose not to speak” at the meeting, rather than raising objections, although he acknowledged the complaints of Syria, Russia, and Algeria (speaking on behalf of the African Group), and specific complaints raised by Canada, China, Ethiopia, and Nepal.

As Deutsche Welle also explained, however, “Only a few UN states, including Sweden, Canada, and South Africa, gave their unreserved approval to the report during the debate of the Human Rights Council,” and although the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, made it clear that the dark days of John Bolton (President Bush’s ambassador, who had nothing but contempt for the UN) were long gone, her attempts to deflect attention from scrutiny of the U.S. rendition and torture program, by mentioning President’s Obama promise to close Guantánamo, were weak for two reasons.

The first of these is because the president has, in fact, failed to close the prison, having missed his self-imposed deadline for doing so, and no new date has been set for its closure; and the second is that, as Deutsche Welle also noted, Susan Rice “made no comment on the Bagram facility, the main detention facility for persons detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, or other formerly secret prisons in third countries where American officials sent prisoners who were then often subjected to harsh interrogation procedures or torture.”

Even so, the experts were obviously relieved that the United States had not opposed the report. Shaheen Ali explained that the U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Eileen Donahoe, “backed the study although she raised concerns about the methodology used in preparing it,” and Martin Scheinin added that, although, as “a matter of international law,” the Obama administration was “continuing to violate their human rights obligations by not closing” Guantánamo and by not holding trials for those held there, “on the domestic level and on the policy level, I understand the situation. The government is unable to do anything when the legislature prohibits part of the options available, namely taking a single person from Guantánamo to the mainland United States.” As a result, he said, he understood that the focus is on convincing third countries to offer homes to prisoners cleared for release, who cannot be repatriated because of fears that they will be tortured in their home countries.

Without accountability for the crimes committed under the Bush administration, and explanations of what happened to the significant number of prisoners held in the secret prison network — beyond those who ended up at Guantánamo, who were released (in a few cases) or who, like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, were repatriated and later killed — the experts’ call for secret detention to be brought to an end will lack the kind of impact that will make other countries think twice about aping U.S. policies, or continuing with the kind of policies that inspired the Bush administration in the first place.

In the report, President Obama got off lightly given recent reports of dubious detention and interrogation practices in Afghanistan — even though, just the day before the discussion of the report in the Human Rights Council, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, issued a report on America’s “targeted killing” program using drones, and told the Council that it amounted to “a license to kill without accountability.” With reference to what he described as the “prolific” U.S. use of “targeted killings,” which also echoed what happened with President Bush’s program of “extraordinary rendition,” secret detention and torture, Alston explained that the U.S. was “setting a damaging example that other countries would follow,” as Middle East Online described it.

“I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Alston told the Council, adding, “In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated.”

Alston’s report helped to shine a light on the extent to which drone killings have replaced the messy business of “extraordinary rendition,” torture, and secret prisons under the Obama administration, further undercutting Susan Rice’s protestations about President Obama’s record, and reinforcing how important the role of the United States is in shaping internationally acceptable standards for dealing with terrorism.

It is not enough for President Obama to maintain, as he has since before taking office, that his administration wants to “look forward and not backwards.” By doing so, he ensures that the crimes of the previous administration not only remain largely hidden (as the report demonstrates), but, more important, a message is sent out to the rest of the world that those at the highest levels of the U.S. government who commit crimes that “might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity” continue to demonstrate, through their speeches and tours, that they are, to all intents and purposes, beyond the law.

And with the continuing exposure of his own forays into similar territory through the CIA’s “targeted killings” program, President Obama also needs to reflect on his own responsibility to uphold “the legal principle of international accountability” whose wreckage is so thoroughly exposed in the UN’s secret detention report.

Note: For member states’ responses during the discussion of the report on June 3, see this UN article here.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press) and serves as policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation. Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (8) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 307