The Korean War, wrote Paul Cummings for the History News Network in 2005, is “assumed to have been a limited war, but its prosecution bore a strong resemblance to the air war against Imperial Japan in the second world war, and was often directed by the same US military leaders.” For instance

The air force dropped 625 tons of bombs over North Korea on 12 August, a tonnage that would have required a fleet of 250 B-17s in the second world war. By late August B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B-29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm.

Early in the war, General Douglas MacArthur, leader of the United Nations command, anticipated Chinese intervention.

“I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb — to strike a blocking blow — which would require a six months’ repair job. Sweeten up my B-29 force.”

Nuclear weapons: not just a force multiplier, but a force sweetener. In any event, at the time, MacArthur’s suggestion was shelved. But when Chinese troops later entered North Korea, President Truman threatened the use of nuclear weapons. Then

… MacArthur said he had a plan that would have won the war in 10 days: “I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria.” Then he would have … “spread behind us — from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea — a belt of radioactive cobalt . . . it has an active life of between 60 and 120 years. For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North.” He was certain that the Russians would have done nothing about this extreme strategy: “My plan was a cinch.”

MacArthur, wrote Cumings, “sounds like a warmongering lunatic”

… but he was not alone. Before the Sino-Korean offensive, a committee of the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] had said that atomic bombs might be the decisive factor in cutting off a Chinese advance into Korea; initially they could be useful in “a cordon sanitaire.” … A few months later Congressman Albert Gore, Sr. … suggested “something cataclysmic” to end the war: a radiation belt dividing the Korean peninsula permanently into two.”

If readers are able to unearth another example of plans to use nuclear bombs to irradiate a strip of land to act as a defense or buffer, kindly inform us. For now, it stands as the silliest use devised for nuclear weapons. Except of course for nuclear deterrence: the idea that possession of nuclear weapons can prevent nuclear war even for the foreseeable future.

The post The Award for Most Inventive Use of a Nuclear Weapon Goes To… appeared first on The Faster Times.

Are expats in Phnom Penh willfully segregating themselves from the locals? That’s the thesis of French journalist Frédéric Amat in his new “Expatriates Strange Lives in Cambodia,” a critique of the life-styles and attitudes of Cambodia’s many foreign residents.

From the Phnom Penh Post’s interview with Mr Amat: “They [expatriates] don’t really open the window to Cambodia. They don’t try to speak the language. They are not interested in the culture. When they finish their job, they just go to the foreign bars, have beers with friends. They live in Cambodia, but they don’t really live with Cambodians.”

The new book quickly stirred up a storm of Internet indignation and soul-searching among Cambodia’s expats (and some locals, too). Not that this should surprise anyone. Most expats in Cambodia notice pretty quickly that the social scene in Phnom Penh is strikingly divided, with local Khmer and barang living largely parallel lives.

I definitely noticed the parallel universe thing quickly when I moved to Phnom Penh. For many Western expats, relationships with locals don’t extend much beyond work, shopping, restaurant wait-staff and perhaps work-related social events. Expats rarely just went and grabbed a beer with locals, and the reverse was true.

A Western expat might have a nice relationship with that Cambodian guy or girl he or she sees everyday at the office, but the two are pretty unlikely to run into each other in the Java Cafe morning latte line, or at the neighborhood Cambodian beer-and- roasted cow joint.

Locals are usually in rather short supply at expat parties, popular expat restaurants, and at bars that are commonly frequented by foreigners (with the exception of hostess bars that have a certain intrinsic reliance on local labor).

Hell, the fact I even feel the need to add the qualifier “expat” to a list of public locations indicates that something is amiss.

Why is this? Are foreigners in Cambodia inherently neo-colonialist jerks, re-enacting the bad old days of total French domination, forced labor without pay, and the wanton consumption of gin n’ tonics? Do we secretly wish we could still run around Phnom Penh in the back of a hand-pulled rickshaw while wearing a pith helmet? (Some middle-aged tourists apparently never got the memo on that one.)

As with most things, the truth about social segregation between foreigners and locals in Cambodia is a lot more complicated then that.

It’s worth pointing out here that most expats who move to Cambodia aren’t stereotypical, unenlightened racist pigs. Aside from the ever-popular sexpat crowd, most permanent foreign residents of Cambodia are educated, intelligent, and exceptionally open to new experiences.

Think about it: It’s a hell of a lot easier to be an abhorrent racist from the comfort of your own pleasingly air-conditioned and clean Sydney/Indianapolis/Birmingham flat, than it is to willfully choose to live in a rented closet-sized Phnom Penh apartment with a persistent giant spider problem. So, we’re not looking at a demographic group that has serious intrinsic problems with cultural differences.

Than why is there this obvious, striking divide between foreigners and locals in Phnom Penh?

Probably because it really isn’t that easy to make local friends in Cambodia for various reasons, which we’ll get to later. And once an expatriate new in town finds a comfortable group of foreign friends who speak her language, understand her culture, and can totally sympathize with those never-ending gastrointestinal problems, putting forth the effort required to make local friends becomes a much less attractive prospect.

Take me. I felt (and feel) guilty as hell about my lack of local friends. I wanted to have local friends. I just couldn’t seem to translate intention into action, and once I had a healthy group of foreign acquaintances, it became that much harder to step outside my bubble and put forth a concentrated effort to overcome all those cultural and language barriers. (I think I did do the right thing by learning some Khmer, but I’ll get to that.)

I felt especially bad about my lack of local friends because I’d had a totally different experience while staying in India. When I was interning in Bangalore, almost all my friends were Indian, my co-workers were (mostly) Indian, and I had no clue where expatriates hung out – nor did I feel a pressing desire to find out where. I was deeply suspicious of expats and tourists who refused to associate with anyone who wasn’t a Westerner.

Then, I moved to Cambodia.

I don’t think of myself as a racist – I know, famous last words – but I also have very few Cambodian friends, despite 15 months living in Phnom Penh, my work directly with Cambodians as a reporter, and my attempts to learn some of the Khmer language. This could be because I’m a douchebag, and God knows I won’t attempt to deny that — but it’s also true that a lot of my fellow Western expats, if not most of them, were in the same boat.

So whose fault is it? I think blame can be laid on both Western and Cambodian attitudes.

Many expats in Cambodia don’t work too hard at cultivating Khmer friends, especially because it isn’t easy to do. Now that that’s been established, it’s hard to discount that long-running and deeply held cultural and social differences between expats and Cambodians have something to do with the divide, too.

Traditional Theravada Buddhist teachings taught most Cambodians that higher education and persistent curiosity about the outside world weren’t much good – and the draconian anti-intellectual policies of the Khmer Rouge in recent history only reinforced this concept. Couple that with a culture that tends to value reticent, secretive public behavior – again, reinforced by the paranoiac Khmer Rouge – and you’ve got a recipe for parallel lives.

I suspect these cultural attitudes could also explain why most Cambodians don’t go out of their way to make foreign friends. When I was in India and China, having foreign friends was considered something of a status symbol among locals who had any command of the English language. You’d get stopped on the street by locals eager to practice their English and to find out more about you.

Although this eager solicitation of foreign friendship could get rather annoying at times – I started power-walking rather angrily through Beijing because of this, in fact – I realize now that it was a pretty easy and low-stress way to meet and interact with locals, that didn’t require me to put forth a ton of effort.

There is a real language barrier between foreigners and Cambodians, of course, but I don’t think this explains everything. Although Cambodians have pretty good English skills in general (especially when compared to locals in many other non-English speaking nations) you’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody who just wants to shoot the shit, as is commonplace in some other developing nations.

Maybe Cambodians just don’t want to approach foreigners to improve their knowledge – or, alternately, they think it’s plain rude to rock up to a barang and ask if he wants to get a coffee and talk about grammar, the latest Jennifer Lopez song, and the pros and cons of Barack Obama.

It’s also worth noting that huge economic disparities exist between foreigners and the vast majority of Cambodians. You may work at the same office and do the same job as your Cambodian counterpart, but it’s likely you’re making considerably more money than he or she is. Furthermore, most Cambodians have all sorts of complicated family financial obligations, whereas most foreigners in Cambodia don’t have children, aging relatives, an extended family, or an ailing water buffalo to support.

Family obligations, the expense of drinking, and social norms also mean that most Cambodians are disinclined to bar-hop until 3:00 AM on a regular basis – and I’m guessing that many of the Cambodians that do bar-hop until 3:00 AM on a regular basis would probably prefer to be hanging out with their Khmer friends.

Then, there’s the education thing. Most Cambodians haven’t had much access to education, and that’s in stark contrast to the foreign crowd, who are often highly highly educated (and would like you to know about it).

This does matter when it comes to conversational topics and cultural touchstones, even if we’d all like to pretend it doesn’t – after all, so much of conversation among the over-educated classes revolves around what-music-do-you-like and what-do-you-think-of-Syria-anyway and did-you-read-that-book-on-giant-squid. This is not anyone’s fault (other than Cambodia’s dismal education system), but it does create serious cultural and conversational roadblocks.

So what can a hapless foreigner looking to break out of the expat bubble to do?

I’m absolutely no role model, as I’m still trying to figure this one out myself. Also, I am writing this from a small town in Southern Iowa. Seriously.

Now that these caveats are out of the way, here’s some ideas.

- Every expat in Cambodia needs to learn some Khmer. No exceptions. I don’t care if you’re “really busy” or “bad at languages.” There are language tutors everywhere. They will charge you $5 an hour, they will likely come to your home, and they will probably provide with you all kinds of interesting insights into Khmer culture.

My Khmer is lousy, but just being able to hold a simple conversation with Russian Market Underwear Lady or That Guy Who Makes Keys On My Corner made my life in Cambodia that much more pleasant. Not to mention that Cambodians are almost always flattered that you’re trying to learn their language, are happy to help, and will only make fun of you a little bit.

And by the way – I’m just plain offended if your excuse is “Khmer is a small language, and this is a really small country, and I’m probably not going to be here long anyway so why bother?”

This is just a duplicitous way to say “This country and its language are crap. Why am I even here?”

Which begs the question, do Khmer people want to be friends with you?

- Read books on Cambodian stuff. You got a job in a foreign country, I’m assuming you’re capable of reading a book. Books on Cambodia happen to be really cheap and available everywhere – thank you, nonexistent copyright laws! – and reading as many of them as possible is a really good way to familiarize yourself with Cambodian culture.

Understanding Cambodian history – and that means stuff that didn’t happen during the Khmer Rouge era or in Angkor’s heyday – is another excellent way to contextualize day to day life in 2012 Phnom Penh.

A working knowledge of Theravada Buddhism will also go a long way towards helping you understand why Cambodians do some of the stuff they do. Also, you’re much less likely to look like a total blundering idiot next time you wander into a pagoda.

- Never turn down a Cambodian invitation. Get invited to a wedding/Khmer New Year party/family get-together/beer garden fest/Pchum Ben celebration? Awesome. Go. This does not happen everyday, you’ll almost certainly have a good time, and the Guinness at Paddy Rice will still be there tomorrow in case you were worried.

- Re-evaluate how you talk about and to “the natives.” If expats aren’t talking about nightmarish gastrointestinal problems, the latest Totally Shocking relationship drama, or big important world events (less common), they’re likely complaining about Cambodia and its denizens.

This is part of human nature in small doses, but “small doses” does not describe some of the virulent language I’ve heard from my fellow Western adventurers. Knock it off. I do not want to hear your trenchant observations on how lazy, stupid, and foolish Cambodians are. I bet that girl at the bar who speaks way better English than you realize isn’t getting a huge kick out of it, either.

And then, there’s the more subtle language of exclusion. Not talking about locals at all, as you sit in a Western-owned bar over a bacon cheeseburger and a Fosters, or dismissing most Cambodians as some sort of ineffable, inscrutable Oriental stereotype, is demeaning as well.

- Talk to locals, instead of talking down to them. It’s easy to assume that the locals around you are a bit dense because you have to simplify your language somewhat to talk with them. This is intellectually lazy as hell, of course, but it’s something a lot of people do. Don’t do that.

Talk to people. Strike up conversations at the market, at the grocery store, at the bar, or at a party. Ask questions about day to day life in Cambodia, ask about the kids, ask about the family farm, ask about music, whatever.

I know striking up conversations with strangers is really difficult to do in Cambodia, but it’s certainly worth trying.

This goes double for your coworkers. Make a real effort to befriend them and include them in whatever it is you’re doing. Even if they don’t or can’t accept your invitation, I imagine they appreciate being thought of.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’d appreciate more suggestions. Maybe we can make a longer list.

That’s the Western side of the equation, but of course, there’s more. Ultimately, it falls to Cambodians to write about how Khmer people might do a better job of reaching out to the foreigners in their midst – or at least write about how better a smart Cambodian might tolerate the Western deluge.

What’s the single most important thing an expat in Cambodia can do? Stop thinking of Cambodian people as a mysterious, inscrutable other race, even if it’s difficult, even if it gives you a headache. Even if working really hard to befriend and understand local people kind of sucks, and you’d really rather be eating sushi at Rahu while complaining about your neighbors’ 2-day-long epic wedding.

It’s extremely difficult to understand or identify with or befriend people from a totally different culture from our own, who exist in a different cultural paradigm, who speak a different language. I get it.

But isn’t that understanding why we live in a foreign country in the first place?

The post How to Make Cambodian Friends and Influence People: Expats’ Parallel Lives in Phnom Penh appeared first on The Faster Times.

Russia does not exclude preemptive use of weapons against [NATO] missile defense systems in Europe but only as a last resort, the Russian General Staff said on Thursday at a missile defense conference in Moscow.

“The placement of new strike weapons in the south and northwest of Russia against [NATO] missile defense components … is one possible way of incapacitating the European missile defense infrastructure,” Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov said.

Taking into account the “destabilizing nature of the missile defense system… the decision on the pre-emptive use of available weapons will be made during an aggravation of the situation,” he said.

Exactly why missile defense is destabilizing can be difficult to grasp (at least it was for me). After all, it only seems natural for a state to seek to protect itself against nuclear attack. Besides, how can a parry be considered as aggressive as a thrust? I once endeavored to explain in a post.

Here’s how it works. A state — Russia again — is considered vulnerable to a first, or initial, strike by the United States, during the course of which many of its surface (as opposed to those based in submarines, which are, of course, mobile) nuclear weapons would be wiped out. (This argument requires a suspension of belief that Russia would refrain from launching a counterattack on warning, that is, while the U.S. missiles were in the air, instead of waiting until they struck — still the only sure-fire method of verifying a nuclear attack.)

Russia’s retaliatory force would be further diminished if much of it was destroyed while in the air by U.S. missile defense. (This requires a suspension of belief that the day when missile defense is that effective will ever come). The crux of this theory is that since Russia knows that under this arrangement it’s going to lose missiles both on the ground and in the air it’s motivated to build more to compensate. (Why Russian missile defense isn’t considered destabilizing to America’s “deterrent” is a question seldom, if ever, raised.)

More from the RIA Novosti article:

“By 2018-2020 – that is the third and fourth phases of the deployment of the Euro-missile defense in Europe – the continent should have enough [NATO] anti-missile defense to be able to intercept part of Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine launched ballistic missiles,” Patrushev said at an international conference on Euro-missile defense in Moscow.

At the Christian Science Monitor, Yousaff Butt backed this up.

The problem with European missile defense is that while it’s designed to counter Iran, the faster interceptors due to come online in 2018 will also be able to engage Russian warheads, upsetting this all-important perception of parity.

Though what Butt probably meant by “designed to counter Iran” was in the highly unlikely event that Iran develops missiles that could reach Europe, not to mention the nuclear weapons that would be affixed to them as warheads. Meanwhile RIA Novosti reported that NATO’s Deputy General Secretary Alexander Vershbow said:

“In fact, we have no desire at all to disturb global strategic stability,” he told the conference. “Quite the contrary: NATO missile defense will be capable of intercepting only a small number of relatively unsophisticated ballistic missiles. It does not have the capability to neutralize Russian deterrence.”

Ivan Oelrich explained in the January/February issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (behind a pay wall)

Almost all independent US analysts—that is, those outside the government and the defense industry—are deeply skeptical of the feasibility of missile defenses, especially against a technically sophisticated country like Russia. To these skeptics, therefore, Russia’s position seems frustratingly irrational: Russia is letting the potential for mutually beneficial arrangements be undermined by the USA’s politically motivated pursuit of a system that will never work.

But Patrushev said:

“Our experts say other targets, which could require serious missile defense against it, do not really exist.”

The United States and NATO may act like Russia is being a drama queen about missile defense, but it knows very well that the system will never be used against Iran. Even if that were its intention, it would be years before it’s necessary to defend Europe against Iran — years of NATO missile-defense deployment acting as a burr in Russia’s saddle as well as an ongoing obstacle to disarmament. Not only is missile defense destabilizing, it’s an endless fund of misinformation between the United States and Russia.

The post Missile Defense: Ever the Fly in the Ointment of U.S.-Russia Relations appeared first on The Faster Times.

In the late eighties and early nineties, AQ Khan, lord of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program as well as the nuclear black market, shared know-how and components with Iran. Then, in late 2002, it was learned that Iran had built a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak. It appears, though, that in 2003 all but vestigial research toward an Iranian nuclear-weapons program ended.

For better or worse, that’s 55 years, off and on, that Iran’s name has been linked with the word nuclear and 25 years since Iran initiated actual work on developing nuclear weapons. By contrast, the United States developed nuclear weapons from scratch in four years during what, compared to today, was the technological dark ages. In the interim, many other states have also succeeded in relatively short timeframes. Thus, it doesn’t strike most in the West as plausible that a developed state like Iran has yet to bring its program — if you’re among those who believe that, in fact, it exists — to fruition.

Jacques E. C. Hymans of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California addresses Iran’s inability (again, if you accept that it’s trying) to close the nuclear circle in an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs titled “Botching the Bomb: Why Nuclear Weapons Programs Often Fail on Their Own — and Why Iran’s Might, Too” (behind a pay wall). He begins by providing an example of an official skeptical of how long it’s taking Iran to close the circle (again, assuming you’re among those who believe that’s what it seeks). [Emphasis added.]

“Today, almost any industrialized country can produce a nuclear weapon in four to five years,” a former chief of Israeli military intelligence recently wrote in The New York Times, echoing a widely held belief. Indeed, the more nuclear technology and know-how have diffused around the world, the more the timeline for building a bomb should have shrunk. But in fact, rather than speeding up over the past four decades, proliferation has gone into slow motion. … Seven countries launched dedicated nuclear weapons projects before 1970, and all seven succeeded in relatively short order. By contrast, of the ten countries that have launched dedicated nuclear weapons projects since 1970, only three have achieved a bomb.

In Iran’s case — and I’ll issue this disclaimer just once more: assuming you believe that they’re trying to develop nuclear weapons — a number of factors have contributed to the delay. Foremost among them is that because Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it’s subject to monitoring and verification. Other reasons include imported nuclear components that the West has sabotaged and killing of scientists, the reduction of the nuclear black market to but a shadow of itself, and sanctions. But here, according to Hymans, is the essential reason in Iran as well as other states:

The great proliferation slowdown. … is mostly the result of the dysfunctional management tendencies of the states that have sought the bomb in recent decades. Weak institutions in those states have permitted political leaders to unintentionally undermine the performance of their nuclear scientists, engineers, and technicians.

In fact, according to Hymans,

… most rulers of recent would-be nuclear states have tended to rely on a coercive, authoritarian management approach to advance their quest for the bomb, using appeals to scientists’ greed and fear as the primary motivators. That coercive approach is a major mistake, because it produces a sense of alienation in the workers by removing their sense of professionalism. As a result, nuclear programs lose their way. Moreover, underneath these bad management choices lie bad management cultures. In developing states with inadequate civil service protections, every decision tends to become politicized, and state bureaucrats quickly learn to keep their heads down. Not even the highly technical matters faced by nuclear scientific and technical workers are safe from meddling politicians. The result is precisely the reverse of what the politicians intend: not heightened efficiency but rather a mixture of bureaucratic sloth, corruption, and endless blame shifting.

He uses Iraq as an example. On the other hand, Hymans writes:

… military attacks by foreign powers have tended to unite politicians and scientists in a common cause to build the bomb. Therefore, taking radical steps to rein in Iran would be not only risky but also potentially counterproductive, and much less likely to succeed than the simplest policy of all: getting out of the way and allowing the Iranian nuclear program’s worst enemies — Iran’s political leaders — to hinder the country’s nuclear progress all by themselves. … The world is lucky that during the past few decades, the leaders of would-be nuclear weapons states have been so good at frustrating and alienating their scientists. The United States and its partners must take care not to adopt policies that resolve those leaders’ management problems for them.

Unfortunately policymakers vulnerable to the conventional wisdom that Iran is developing nuclear weapons may well be too susceptible to pressure from hawks to exhibit that degree of patience and restraint.

The post When Nuclear Weapons Programs Fail to Ripen appeared first on The Faster Times.

Here are further excerpts from his pronouncements, about which I recently posted (Iran Tries to Take the Moral High Ground on Nukes). More from the February speech (the translation on his official website):

Nuclear weapons are not at all beneficial to us. Moreover, from an ideological and fiqhi perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons as unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin. We also believe that keeping such weapons is futile and dangerous, and we will never go after them.

In 2011 Ayatollah Khameini spoke about nuclear weapons at greater length.

Iran is not after an atomic bomb, and it is even opposed to possession of chemical weapons. Even when Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, we did not try to manufacture chemical weapons. Such things are not in line with the principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Furthermore, he declared that nuclear weapons “are useless except for intimidation, massacre and a false sense of security based on pre-emptive power resulting from guaranteed annihilation of everyone.” Citing the atom bombs that the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Risen quoted him saying (emphasis added):

The use of nuclear weapons resulted not only in large-scale killings and destruction, but also in indiscriminate massacre of people. … Therefore, using or even threatening to use such weapons is considered a serious violation of the most basic humanitarian rules and is a clear manifestation of war crimes.

Risen points out, though, that:

… those comments are not only at odds with some of Iran’s behavior but also with. … remarks Ayatollah Khamenei made last year that it was a mistake for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to give up his nuclear weapons program.

Referring to Colonel Qaddafi, Ayatollah Khamenei said that “this gentleman wrapped up all his nuclear facilities, packed them on a ship and delivered them to the West and said, ‘Take them!’ “

“Look where we are, and in what position they are now,” he added.

Risen, however, fails to note that those remarks sound less like Ayatollah Khamanei expressing his personal feelings than stating a fact. Risen then writes:

Complicating matters further, some analysts say that Ayatollah Khamenei’s denial of Iranian nuclear ambitions has to be seen as part of a Shiite historical concept called taqiyya, or religious dissembling. For centuries an oppressed minority within Islam, Shiites learned to conceal their sectarian identity to survive, and so there is a precedent for lying to protect the Shiite community.

In response to Risen, Juan Cole examines taqiyya more closely.

Imam Ruhullah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, demanded that taqiyya be abandoned in favor of holy war or jihad. Shiite expert Rainer Brunner argues that pious dissimulation has “completely lost its importance” in contemporary, Shiite-majority Iran.

So the idea that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the theocratic leader of a Shiite-majority Islamic Republic, would give a dishonest fatwa about a key principle in Islamic law (the prohibition on killing innocent non-combatants in war) is a non-starter. Khamenei, being in Khomeini’s tradition, is bound by the latter’s hostility to dissimulation.

That may well be, but considering his brutal record, Ayatollah Khameini’s ethical code can only be judged as selective at best. In 2009 accounts by a defector from his private guard provided insights into his ruthless policies, as well as his lavish lifestyle. For instance, the defector — considered credible by many — provided:

… new information that links Ayatollah Khamenei to the brutal assault on protestors following the presidential elections in June. The man [named Hossain Taeb] alleged to have [been] carrying out interrogations of prisoners at the notorious Kahrizak detention centre, where at least three people were tortured to death, is a key part of the inner circle. [He] is said to have run an extensive surveillance operation for the personal use of Ayatollah Khamenei for almost 15 years. Each evening the leader is said to listen to recordings of senior officials and colleague talking about him in a compilation that normally lasts 20 minutes. [Meanwhile] the leader’s second son… played a prominent role in organising the Basij militia that has meted out violence against protesters. [Like the Stalinesque touch where the emphasis is added? -- RW]

But Gareth Porter provides more evidence that Ayatollah Khameini sought to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

When the IAEA passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend enrichment and adopt an intrusive monitoring system in September [2003]. … hardliners were arguing publicly that Iran should withdraw from the NPT rather than make any effort to convince the West that Iran did not intend to make nuclear weapons.

Sometime in September and October, Khamenei ordered the designation of the Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rohani, who reported directly to him, as the single individual responsible for coordinating all aspects of nuclear policy. … It was Rohani himself who announced on Oct. 25, 2003, that Khamenei believed that nuclear weapons were illegal under Islam.

Still, it behooves us to revisit some of Ayatollah Khomeini’s comments for a moment.

… we do not possess a nuclear weapon, and we will not build one. … Iran is not seeking to have the atomic bomb. … using or even threatening to use such weapons is considered a serious violation of the most basic humanitarian rules and is a clear manifestation of war crimes.

Ayatollah Khomeini addresses the possession and use of nuclear weapons, but neglects to mention developing or acquiring the capability to build nuclear weapons without actually manufacturing and deploying them. One might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that denouncing what’s known as “latent” or “virtual” deterrence is obviously implied in condemning the use of weapons.

First of all, though, even though he was never a marja (a grand ayatollah empowered to make decisions in religious law), it’s a mistake to overlook the fondness for hair-splitting that theological authorities of all stripes share with lawyers (the “How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” syndrome). In other words, Ayatollah Khameini may see actual nuclear weapons and their deployment as a sin, but not the capability to manufacture them.

Let’s return now to Risen’s statement that he “often uses religious language when he talks about the nuclear issue, which can jar Western analysts trying to gauge the meaning of such strong statements.” The “jarring” or disconnect may occur because of a natural tendency on our part to hold a religious leader — who just happens to be the leader of a state — to a higher standard. The truth is, Ayatollah Khameini probably hedges and equivocates like any ruler. His disinclination to live up to the ethical and spiritual standards to which a religious leader ought to aspire shouldn’t serve as an excuse to avoid treating him and his people like statesmen and negotiating with them in good faith.

The post Are Nuclear Weapons Really a “Big Sin” to Iran’s Supreme Leader? appeared first on The Faster Times.

This comment was the type of statement that seems appallingly naive to foreign policy elites across the political spectrum, but seems like good common sense to many ordinary Americans also across the political spectrum. Perry’s argument was indeed somewhat naive. Foreign assistance cannot be determined annually; the foreign policy infrastructure is significantly more complex than Perry’s statement suggests; and foreign assistance flows through numerous government agencies requiring a lengthy and time consuming budgeting process. Nonetheless, Perry’s core point that the U.S. should only give money to countries that can make a compelling argument for that assistance seems like a reasonably straightforward framework for foreign assistance.

The problem with Perry’s approach is that it does not reflect the actual causal links underlying foreign policy. Intuitively, one would think that the logic of foreign policy is that countries that are either friendly, valuable strategically, or otherwise important to the U.S. should become allies and, if they need it, receive foreign assistance. In this model, foreign assistance is the result of an alliance. This would be a reasonable guideline for foreign assistance, and was probably originally how assistance decisions were made.

Today, however, this order is largely reversed. Instead of foreign countries receiving assistance because they are allies, in much of the world, including large parts of Africa, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, foreign countries are U.S. allies because they receive foreign assistance. Thus, for non-wealthy countries, receiving U.S. assistance is what defines that country as an American ally. To a large extent, the alliance has become the result of the assistance, rather than the other way around.

This situation has emerged from decades of foreign assistance, the evolution of numerous governmental and semi-governmental organizations committed to delivering foreign assistance, and a view in Washington that it is almost axiomatically in the interest of the U.S. to be deeply involved in other countries. Foreign assistance is what secures this involvement, so for a foreign country, the act of refusing assistance, which does not occur too frequently, is a hostile gesture, while accepting foreign assistance is taken in Washington as a sign of friendship on the part of a foreign government.

This is obviously bad fiscal policy because it creates an incentive for the government to give foreign assistance to as many countries as possible. More significantly, it makes it very difficult for the U.S. to cut another country off from foreign assistance because that country is an ally, not because of what it does, but because it takes foreign assistance. Thus, the U.S. has backed itself into a rhetorical corner where we have to give money to a country because it is an ally; and the proof that it is an ally is that we give money to it.

The U.S. is a major donor country contributing money for different purposes in dozens of countries around the world. Given that, it would make sense for foreign assistance to be a tool which diplomats and policy makers can use to influence outcomes or send messages to other countries. However, in the current reality, in which allies are largely defined as such because they receive foreign assistance, it is increasingly difficult to use assistance as a tool of foreign policy.

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The details of these cases are significant because they are evidence that the Georgian government’s commitment to fair elections in October, when the country will choose a parliament and prime minister, cannot be taken for granted. The intimidation of Georgian Dream supporters is part of a pattern, going back for several elections in Georgia, where long before the election itself occurs, it is made clear to supporters of the opposition that there is a cost associated with visibly opposing the government. This, not surprisingly, is a very effective way to dissuade people from supporting the opposition and to facilitate a big victory by the ruling United National Movement (UNM) party.

The Ivanishvili citizenship case demonstrates the legal pyrotechnics which the UNM has been willing to employ to ensure that they would not have to face any strong opposition in elections. Ivanishvili is an extremely wealthy Georgian businessman and philanthropist. He received his citizenship from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2004, which the Georgian government revoked late last year, shortly after Ivanishvili stated his intentions to become involved in politics. Although the Georgian government provided an obscure and tenuous legal rationale for this decision, and for the court decision upholding this decision, the real reason they stripped Ivanishvili, who was born and raised in Georgia and has lived there most of the last decade, of his citizenship was because he represented an electoral threat to the UNM.

The actions by the Chamber of Control and the Georgian legislature last week, at least at first glance, indicate that Georgia’s regime, which is semi-authoritarian in nature but rhetorically committed to democracy, was indeed seeking to align its actions more with rhetoric. This analysis, however, misses an important element, one which has direct and ongoing implications for western, particularly American, policy makers. In the last few week’s, beginning with their reaction to the Chamber of Control, the U.S. has begun to make public, and specific, statements urging Georgia’s government to take issues of democracy seriously.

For most of the time since Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003, concerns about the increasingly less democratic nature of Georgia’s regime, which people in Washington began to notice sometime around 2008, were always raised privately. A trip to Tbilisi by a visiting U.S. official would include public congratulations to the Georgian government for its democratic credentials, while concerns about the lack of media freedom, recent electoral or legal shenanigans, or the growing centralization of political power were made privately and discreetly. Similarly, Georgian officials visiting Washington were publicly greeted with platitudes about the strength of Georgian democracy, while concerns were, again, raised privately These warnings were generally politely ignored by the Georgian government who continued doing as it pleased while seeking to persuade the Georgian people that Saakashvili was uniquely able to win financial and political support for Georgia.

In the last few weeks, however, this dynamic has begun to change. At a confirmation hearing for Richard Norland, the Ambassador-designate from the U.S. to Georgia, shortly after the Chamber of Control began calling in citizens for questioning, two U.S. Senators, Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) made it clear that the senate takes concerns about problems of democracy seriously. Norland’s responses to these questions indicated that he shared those concerns. A similar dynamic occurred last week after the Georgian court upheld the decision that Ivanishvili would not get his citizenship back. Immediate, firm and public statements by American officials, notably John Bass, the current U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, pushed the Georgian parliament to this clumsy, and even somewhat embarrassing solution, which is nonetheless a victory for democracy in Georgia.

This new tone in the U.S.-Georgia dialog suggests that it may still be possible for the U.S., which remains Georgia’s biggest and most valued patron, to influence democratic development in Georgia. It also demonstrates the difference between private words, which are easily ignored, and strong public statements which put real pressure on the Georgian government to live up to their publicly, and frequently, stated commitments regarding democracy. As the parliamentary election approaches, it is critical that the U.S. continue, and strengthen, this new posture towards Georgia’s democratic development.

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According to recent public opinion research 69% of the American people want the U.S. to end the war in Afghanistan. This number has probably been bolstered in recent weeks by the Koran burning incident and the killing of 17 Afghan civilians by Robert Bate which have both engendered backlashes against Americans serving in Afghanistan and drawn attention to what many perceive to be the futility of the the U.S. effort there. While these events have reduced support for the war among Americans, the war has not enjoyed the support of the majority of Americans for months.

It should not be axiomatic that if the American people, by a margin of greater than two to one disapprove of a war, than the U.S. should end that war. However, if public opinion runs that strongly against a war, or any foreign policy, the U.S. government should have a clear, compelling and realistic rationale for pursuing that policy. Unfortunately, no such rationale exists for the war in Afghanistan. After more than a decade of war, and despite some significant accomplishments, most notably the killing of Osama Bin Laden, victory in Afghanistan remains poorly defined and elusive.

Increasingly, it seems like the continuation of the war in Afghanistan is a triumph of inertia and bureaucratic logic over national interest, public opinion or a clear headed assessment of the war itself. For several years now the conflict in Afghanistan has been deadlocked with every month bringing a few steps forward and roughly the same number of steps back. During these years where the U.S. has not been gaining any clear advantage in Afghanistan the cost in life and treasure has kept piling up.

It is now clear that in addition to the financial and military reasons why winding down the war is a good idea, there are political incentives as well. Ending the war is now good politics; and the candidate or party that figures this out first will pick up an edge as the 2012 election approaches. It is unlikely, however, that either Romney or Obama will exploit this political opening. Obama is already very closely identified with the war; and Romney is seeking to demonstrate his conservative credentials by seeking to embrace a hawkish foreign policy.

The costs of ending the war in Afghanistan have been clear for a while and include the potential of a return of the Taliban there, the possibility that Afghanistan will reemerge as a hub of international terrorist activity and the dire human rights consequences, particularly for women, which could occur in Afghanistan if the U.S. were to leave. These consequences, while real, only tell half of the story. The other half of the story, which is increasingly important for ordinary Americans, is the near certainty of a rising cost, more American soldiers losing their lives, attacks on Americans working in Afghanistan and the seeming impossibility of the U.S. bringing any lasting peace, democracy or even stability to Afghanistan. Foreign policy, like all policy, should not be made on a simple basis of majority rule, but when the majority is so strongly against a war, and the arguments for that war are so shopworn and implausible, it is probably time to get out.

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The word election, for example, in democratic countries refers to the citizens of that country expressing choosing their leaders through a process of aggregating and counting preferences. Those leaders will then, more or less, reflect the ideals and visions of the people who elected them and seek to turn that into policy and law. This is an ideal which is rarely entirely met by elections in any country, but the goals of elections are broadly understood and agreed upon and the election itself usually seeks, after a fashion, to achieve those goals. In non-democratic systems, in contrast, elections are an opportunity for the state to demonstrate its ability to compel citizens to action, strengthen their patronage networks or even gauge the strength of the opposition, but have little to do with selection leaders or turning preferences into policies.

Similarly, in democratic countries campaigns are primarily concerned with candidates and parties communicating with voters, albeit frequently nonsensically or in ways that are petty, divisive or irrelevant to governance. Candidates are expected to, through media surrogates or in person, present their ideas and record to the people who will then make a choice based on these or other criteria. Even if the ideas are bad, and the candidates worse, this is still the basic structure of a campaign in a democratic system. In non-democratic countries campaigns are primarily about candidates and parties passing out money or goods in exchange for promises of support, or intimidating and making threats towards supporters of political opponents.

Sometimes the way these terms are used is inconsistent in other ways. The word corruption, when used by powerful western countries to describe activities in less powerful countries often takes on a different and sometimes broader meaning than it might have in western countries. For example, while some activities such as police officers shaking down or tax officials taking bribes instead of legitimately collecting taxes are viewed as corrupt by powerful western countries, other activities, such as the strong links between financial contributions to candidates and legislative outcomes are not seen as corrupt behavior by western, particularly American, policy makers. The Citizens United ruling, as we are seeing in the Republican primary this year, has made it possible for extremely wealthy individuals to sponsor candidates for congress and even the White House. If this existed without the protection of the American legal system, in another country, it would be clearly understood to be evidence of a troubling level of corruption.

Overall, using the same words to define very different activities makes it easier for undemocratic leaders, specifically those whose regimes are in the grey area between democracy and dictatorship, to overstate their democratic credentials. It is also easier for even well-meaning observers and analysts to underestimate the extent to which political words mean different things in semi-democratic or semi-authoritarian countries than they do in consolidated democracy. This often produces a situation where the presence of elections or of parties that seem to be campaigning, despite the often fundamentally undemocratic way those activities are conducted, can sometimes create a surprisingly persuasive appearance of greater democracy than actually exists. Observers who are looking for democracy can tell themselves they have found it, when they see its trappings, particularly when undemocratic leaders often make great efforts to create this illusion.

Thus, one of the major issues which needs to be addressed by democracy activists is that of language. An understanding that words like election means something different in Australia than it does in Russia; a campaign is a very different thing in France than it is in Cambodia; or that to be in opposition implies a very different level of tolerance and legal protection from the government in power in England than in Georgia, is the first step towards doing this. When this happens, it will be much easier to assess and understand political conditions more frankly and thus arrive at more clear-eyed approaches to democracy assistance.

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The political, legal and media environment in Russia, as in many other non-democratic countries makes it extremely difficult for opposition political forces to emerge and become strong enough to pose a serious challenge to the country’s leaders. Because of this, elections are less likely to lead to political change, although they can, as may be the case in Russia, initiate a process which changes the way politics occur or even meaningfully weakens a leader, despite his electoral victory.

Regimes like Putin’s and many others in the former Soviet Union do not leave election fraud to election day, doing the bulk of this work earlier in the process, but a key component of this is precluding strong opponents from emerging. This makes it easier to assert that the leader may have used some election fraud to bolster his numbers, but he and his party are still popular with the voters. It is no surprise, nor any real evidence of democracy, that a leader whose opponents do not include anybody who can seriously be viewed as a potential president or prime minister, will have substantial support among the voters. However, this support is rarely very deep as it is grounded only in the comparison between the leader and the other less than plausible candidates.

For leaders like Putin, the primary political task, is not to win reelection, fairly or unfairly, but to use whatever means are needed to make sure a strong opponent does not emerge. This generally consists of shaping the politics of the country so that only weaker, less electable leaders, without the means to wage a real campaign are part of political life. This is the core challenge of semi-authoritarian leaders, but in countries where the state controls access to resources and there is no independent private sector, it is usually not very difficult to achieve this.

The absence of a strong alternative to Putin meant that what happened in the election was of secondary import. That Putin was running against a field dominated by figures from the past, people with questionable opposition and political credibility, and candidates about whom very few people knew anything is, in of itself, evidence of the non-democratic nature of Russia’s political system.

Moreover, if there is no strong opponent, non-democratic leaders can make some concessions regarding fair elections, because the chances of losing are so slim anyway. Putin could, and probably should, have engaged in less election fraud in this recent election because the absence of a serious challenger all but guaranteed his election. This also means that efforts to ensure fair elections that do not take the broader electoral context into consideration, or that begin relatively late in the process are going to have very little impact on the overall state of democracy. It does not really matter how smoothly election day runs, or even if there is less intimidation in the months preceding an election if the president, for example, has manipulated the field so that there is no strong and genuine opposition.

Russia is unusual in its size, wealth and role in the world, but considerably less unusual in its domestic political arrangements, particularly in a post-Soviet context. The lack of competition in the Russian political system, and the efforts undertaken by the Russian leadership to prevent any potentially serious opposition from developing, reflect the broader political environment, and absence of democracy, throughout much of the region. Putin’s efforts to avoid having any other legitimate candidate in the political arena are also similar to efforts made by other leaders throughout much of the former Soviet Union. However, once these efforts fail, and a viable opponent emerges, the dynamic can change very quickly. The Russian people held Putin to 63% despite the absence of free media, fair elections or a legitimate opponent. If just one of those things had been different, Putin would have been in a much more difficult situation last weekend.

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