US foreign policy – Page 4

US government acknowledges reality, sort of

Published on December 4, 2007

Big news yesterday, as Pradva on the Hudson revealed that “American intelligence agencies” have come to the conclusion that “Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen”. The $64,000 question is how much this actually matters: will it halt or slowdown Bush’s war preparations against Iran (that is, if war with Iran is actually on the cards and is not just used as a convenient threat). Lenny is guardedly optimistic on this, but I’m not so sure. The Bush administration has never let itself be embarassed by inconvenient facts before, so why should this time be different?

In general the report does not say anything new about the whole Iran “crisis”. We already knew that the accusations of nuclear chicanery were bogus. The only new thing is that a segment of the American government has finally managed to acknowledge reality, which is a step forwards, I guess. However since the report does say that Iran had been working on a nuclear bomb back in 2003, in a roundabout way it strengthens the Bushite narrative as Iran as an unreliable, aggressive power.

Now as far as I know, only American or American backed sources have ever said that Iran was working on nuclear weapons, there has never been any independent confirmation of this, so the fact that the US government and the media finally have to acknowledge Iran isn’t working on them
now is decidedly a “glass half empty” situation. Especially since it allows the Bushites to argue that their strongarm tactics have worked, as they’re already doing.

Realist empire

Published on October 13, 2007

Jamie explains how the current backlash against the Israel lobby, even if limited, might help to strengthen the power of the (Bush) presidency and hence the American empire:

Take the famous Mearsheimer and Walt book. Responses have centred on whether its portrayal of the dimensions and influence of the Israel Lobby in the United States are accurate; at least when they haven’t been a competition for the most creative ways of suggesting that M & W are anti-semites.

Behind that there’s another point. Lobbies flourish in the US because the law permits them wide latitude to influence public affairs in whatever way they can. You can’t change the terms of trade for Israel without changing them for all the other lobbies. And one of the most efficient ways to do that is to limit Congress’s ability to respond to their lobbying. That in turn implies limiting its freedom of action, something which would automatically strengthen the executive.

I have noticed a … tendency amongst those American liberals brave enough to admit and object to the existence of a Israel lobby to believe that it was largely that lobby that was responsible for the War on Iraq. In a strange way, the wingnut insistence that liberals use “neocon” as an antisemitic slur (don’t bother with the reasoning behind that) also draws from this belief. Having an existing and clearly very succesful lobby to put the blame on makes it of course easier to ignore the flaws and malice in American politics itself that made it possible to start an illegal and immoral war on the flimsiest of reasons.

Will the US attack Iran?

Published on January 2, 2006

Back in March-April 2003, when it looked like the US/UK coalition had won the war on Iraq relatively quick and easy, there were well justified fears that the Bush regime would take this easy victory as an incentive to go on other adventures in the region. At the time it looked like Syria would be the next target, with Iran a close second. Fortunately, the US “victory” quickly turned into a quagmire and the threat of further attacks receded into the background. However, we might have been too complacent in assuming that with the greater part of its army stuck in Iraq the US would be unable to indulge in further adventurism, as Ken MacLeod makes clear.

The war drums have certainly not been silent this past year, with threats against Iran coming not just from the US, but also from its pilot fish in the Middle East, Israel, with both nations making noises about taking out Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. The situation is not helped by Iran’s new president and his rather stupid remarks about Israel.

It is probably true that Iran is in pursuit of an a-bomb of its own; it only makes sense, what with Iraq next door as the perfect example of what happens to annoying countries without nuclear weapons, not to mention the threat of the Israeli atomics. However, Iran’s nuclear program is as much excuse as it would be reason for any US attacks. If Bush attacks Iran, it is as it was with Iraq, because he had wanted to do so from the start.

The question now is not does the US want to attack Iran, but can it? At first glance, it looks unlikely, what with the massive overstretch the US army find itself in in Iraq, but then again, it’s the army that’s overstretched, much less so the US navy and airforce. The US does not necessarily need to invade Iran to get what it wants; a series of well chosen airstrikes may do. Especially when the option to make those strikes nuclear is on the table…

Drawing Iran into the war might actually alleviate the US’ troubles in Iraq. Rightly or wrongly, the US thinks Iran, as well as Syria, is behind much of the resistance against the Occupation. In the best possible case for the US, military action or the threat of military action would lead to the overthrow of the Ayatollahs’ regime in Iran and the subsequent collapse of much of the resistance in Iraq, as well as keep any other troublesome Middle Eastern country nice and fearful. In one fell swoop, the fortunes of the US would’ve been transformed from near-failure into succes.

It is a strategy the Americans have used before, in Vietnam. When the US became involved in what was until then a relatively straightforward war of national liberation, the US took the deliberate step of first drawing North Vietnam into the war and when that did not solve its troubles, by extending the war into Laos and Cambodia. Though the US still lost Vietnam, as well as Cambodia and Laos, it succeeded in so far that it kept its other client states — Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea — under control, kept the dominos from falling and kept its loss from being Vietnam’s win, as the country was left devastated by the war.

Of course, the chance that everything will actually work out in the US’ favour if it would attack Iran are vanishingly small and rational sane people would never take that chance, but the people in charge of the US at the moment are far from rational and sane. For Bush and co, the clock is ticking; with now only two more years before the next presidential elections, this might be the last best throw of the dice. In their view, even a slim chance might be better than just muddling through.

The long arm of US imperialism

Published on September 19, 20051 Comment

Antonio Bento Bembe

There are so many outrages being committed every day it is easy to miss them, so I’m grateful to the local free rag Spits for alerting me to this one. And quite an outrage it is too:

Antonio Bento Bembe is the secretary-general of the FLEC, which has at its aim the liberation of Cabinda, a small Angolan enclave within the Democratic Republic of Congo, which used to be a Portuguese colony independent from its Angolan colony; the FLEC was active against the Portuguese before it had to fight against the MPLA, the Angolan independent movement. The FLEC and the MPLA/Angolan government have been fighting for decades ever since the MPLA first invaded Cabinda in 1975.

Before Cabinda had become a Portuguese colony, it had been a Dutch trading post, which may explain the continuing interest of the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs in the region; it has been acting as a neutral peace broker. It was in this capacity that Antonio Bento Bembe was invited to come to the Netherlands for peace talks. when he did so, he was arrested…

Turns out the United States, once it had learned Antonio Bento Bembe was in the Netherlands, had asked for his extradiction, allegedly because he was involved with the kidnapping of an American pilot in 1990 or 1991. So when he came to the Netherlands in June of this year, he was promptly arrested.

At first glance this just seems to be another example of American cack-handedness; favouring domestic concerns above foreign political realities. Tactless and stupid, but not actively malicious. A second look however reveals that there might be more to the story. As per usual, the whole affair might just revolve around one little word:

Oil.

It turns out most of Angola’s oil production is coming from Cabina, of which the American oil company Chevron has the lion’s share (39.2%, according to Wikipedia). Angolan oil –as noted, largely Cabinan– at the moment also accounts for 4% of the US’ oil imports. The Angolan government is very favourable towards the US and Chevron, a newly independent Cabina might not be, especially since little of the oil profits flow into the province itself, the industry causes huge pollution within it and Angola is harsh in repressing any “unrest”.

Now that pilot that was supposedly kidnapped, was working for Chevron at the time. Who else was working for Chevron before she became Bush’s handler? Guess who signed the extradition request?

It would be just like the Bushies to fuck up a fledgling peace process by wanting to arrest one of the participants, just to make sure America (and Chevron) gets that all important oil…

Maroc.nl has a good overview of the affair, though sadly only in Dutch.

The war in Afghanistan

Published on December 6, 2004

Oh look, three years after the fact, the war in Afghanistan is hot again … in the leftwing blogs:

Am I arguing that on balance I think the Afghanistan war was “wrong?” Honestly, I don’t even know enough to answer that question. I supported it at the time, even though I had justifiable misgivings about the details, but the question isn’t whether it was “justified” in some simplistic sense- it’s whether we achieved desirable and necessary aims at a minimum of cost which couldn’t otherwise be achieved.

This New Republican desire to marginalize the peaceniks is simply the identical logic and rhetoric which led them to be marginalized during the march to Iraq. We see how well that worked out. The peaceniks weren’t necessarily right on Afghanistan, and while I was an Iraq peacenik it wasn’t necessarily the case at the time that I was right. However, in both cases the country would have been better served if we’d had a wider and more comprehensive debate on the goals, wisdom, purpose, methods, and post- conflict planning than we did.

Opposition to the war in Afghanistan was in fact a legitimate position, even if it was the wrong position, and could have been an honest position by people who weren’t simply knee-jerk anti-war, or america-haters, or people who, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, thought we got what we deserved on 9/11, or anything else. People may have thought there were better ways to punish those responsible and to combat terrorism, whether or not they were correct.

Atrios, in response to a post by Kevin “objectively wrong on Iraq” Drum:

If the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden after 9/11 wasn’t enough to justify military action, I’m not sure what is — and I think it’s fair to say that anyone who loudly opposed the Afghanistan war is just flatly opposed to any use of American military power at all.

Drum’s position is ridiculous on its face, but Atrios’ isn’t much better. Look at the stated aims of the
Afghanistan war: kill or capture Osama Bin Laden, destroy Al Quida and its allies in the Taliban, bring
“democracy and freedom” to Afghanistan. Have any of these been fulfilled? Could any of these be fulfilled by military action?

Of course not.

My position at the time was that a war against Afghanistan would only hurt the country even more, would not destroy Bin Laden Al Quida and would be bungled by the Bush administration. I believed then as I do now, that terrorism is better fought by the police than it is by soldiers, that bombing Afghanistan to the stone age, again was an overreaction and a sideshow, a distraction. The US could not be seen to be helpless in the face of the September 11 attacks and had to do something, even if this was the wrong thing to do. Meanwhile, it offered a nice smokescreen for Bush and co to implement their real plans, to start the preparations for the war against Iraq, not to mention the extralegal torture ring they establish in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and in client states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Pakistan.

It was understandable that liberals would support this war, understandable but wrong. I really think this is somewhat obvious three years on, with Afghanistan in as much turmoil as before September 2001, Al Quaida actually stronger and Osama Bin Laden still on the loose.