Left Flank

Putting the al-Kibar «reactor» disclosures into a geostrategic framework is necessary. Stratfor's George Friedman discusses a possible Israel-Syria agreement:

Iran will not be happy about all this. Tehran has invested a fair amount of resources in bulking up Hezbollah, and will not be pleased to see the militia shift from Syrian management to Syrian control. But in the end, what can Iran do? It cannot support Hezbollah directly, and even if it were to attempt to undermine Damascus, those Syrians most susceptible to Tehran's Shiite-flavored entreaties are the Alawites themselves.

The other player that at the very least would be uneasy about all of this is the United States. The American view of Syria remains extremely negative, still driven by the sense that the Syrians continue to empower militants in Iraq. Certainly that aid — and that negative U.S. feeling — is not as intense as it was two years ago, but the Americans might not feel that this is the right time for such a deal. Thus, the release of the information on the Syrian reactor might well have been an attempt to throw a spoke in the wheel of the Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

This interpretation is further reinforced by independent analyses of those videos from al-Kibar.

Professor William Beeman at the University of Minnesota passed along a note today from «a colleague with a U.S. security clearance» about the mysterious Syrian site targeted in a Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike.

The note raises more questions about the evidence shown last week by U.S. intelligence officials to lawmakers in the House and Senate.

1. Satellite photos of the alleged reactor building show no air defenses or anti-aircraft batteries such as the ones found around the Natanz nuclear site in central Iran.
2. The satellite images do not show any military checkpoints on roads near the building.
3. Where are the power lines? The photos show neither electricity lines or substations.
4. Here is a link to a photo of the North Korean facility that the Syrian site was based on. Look at all the buildings surrounding it. The Syrian site was just one building.

The author of the note pinpoints irregularities about the photographs. Beeman's source alleges that the CIA «enhanced» some of the images.

Gee, I feel so empowered to be a minor dupe in a diplomatic ploy!

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Reading the summary of Kishore Mahbuhani's Foreign Affairs article, The Case Against the West, this image from Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux popped into my head. The soundtrack blares, Jim Morrison preaching «...the West is the best...»

There is a fundamental flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is the source of the solutions to the world's key problems. In fact, however, the West is also a major source of these problems. Unless key Western policymakers learn to understand and deal with this reality, the world is headed for an even more troubled phase.

The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the era of its domination is ending and that the Asian century has come. No civilization cedes power easily, and the West's resistance to giving up control of key global institutions and processes is natural. Yet the West is engaging in an extraordinary act of self-deception by believing that it is open to change. In fact, the West has become the most powerful force preventing the emergence of a new wave of history, clinging to its privileged position in key global forums, such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states), and refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust to the Asian century.

Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West has also become increasingly incompetent in its handling of key global problems. Many Western commentators can readily identify specific failures, such as the Bush administration's botched invasion and occupation of Iraq. But few can see that this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's inability to see that the world has entered a new era.

I wonder if Mahbuhani will talk about Joseph Stiglitz's criticism of the IMF in Globalization and Its Discontents, as undermining its long-term mission to promote stability by fostering the short-term interests of the US financial community?

So, that's the new way to change the world? Laziness? Self-indulgence? Check out Jared Diamond!

I wonder how far trademark American frugality lasts when vacation choices include one's lawn and walking. How will American households make ends meet?

Just to be clear, the other typical escape route—to save less—is already closed off. In the fourth quarter of 2007, the personal saving rate was zero percent.

This leaves very few other areas where consumers can make sacrifices to accommodate the pressures from higher prices at the pump. Traditionally, more spending on gasoline was also associated with less spending on cars. People are already buying fewer cars and smaller cars as the cost of driving goes up rapidly. And eventually, families will spend less on gasoline simply because there are fewer jobs to drive to.

With all of these added pressures, many more families will find themselves in an untenable financial situation. This will be especially true for lower-income and moderate-income families who spend disproportionate shares of their income on gasoline and fuel. These also tend to be the same families who feel the brunt of an economic slowdown first.

But, how will those patriotically energy-saving stand up long enough to vote for John McCain?

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One aspect of living in a foreign country is resisting the urge to understand the locals, compared with voicing arguments. Whether it's one's hometown or Busan, economics and natural selection work the same, only it's the local politics and social selection that make one different from the other.

For what it's worth, living in a foreign country adds color to any opinion, and that's about it.

Anyway, John Pomfret (via Daniel W. Drezner) tries to justify his anti-CCP ideology based on his superior insight:

The most interesting group are the nationalists inside China. There, nationalism is an anti-government movement using the cloak of patriotism as a flak jacket against government attacks.

To be sure, China's government ginned up nationalism in the years following the Tiananmen Square crackdown with its various "Patriotic Education Campaigns" and its relentlessly anti-Western media campaigns. Nationalism was a natural safe-harbor for the party. With Communist ideology dead, the party turned to nationalism - and that big old growth rate - as the foundations of its legitimacy.
But by sanctioning nationalism and nationalist demonstrations, China's party-state has created a potent potential enemy.

I'll use a story to illustrate this. In 1988, I was in Nanjing covering massive protests that were touched off by a fight between African and Chinese students over a woman. The first day of the protest was an ugly racist march against what the Chinese called "black devils" stealing "our women." On the second day, however, somebody shouted "we want freedom!" and the whole tenor switched on a dime. Out came the placards calling for political change and, I might add, better food in the campus cafeterias. The same could easily happen around Carrefour stores today. It's all anti-French until the moment it isn't. Then it'll be anti-CCP.

China's nationalist movement has already broached the question of whether the current government is sufficiently standing up for China - because of its slow response in Lhasa against marauding Tibetan rioters; that's just one step away from the broader question of whether the current government possesses the legitimacy to rule China.

So to answer the question up top. China's nationalism doesn't scare me and shouldn't scare the West, even though it may cost Carrefour a few customers. But it definitely should scare the Mandarins in Beijing.

I didn't have to look deep in Pomfret's own comments section for a rebuttal from "Lived In China".

Wow, there's a great big "didn't think of that" lurking around in this article.

Westerners tend to rather blithely assume that anyone who is against an anti-Western government is for them, that anything that comes after the CCP would inevitably be better.

What unnerves people, including me, is that the underground national sentiment in China is not pro-Western, pro-engagement, or pro-responsible stakeholder, but even more radical, even more confrontational that the government we're currently dealing with.

Like many people I know, I was fervently opposed to the Chinese Government BEFORE I went to China. The difference between the CCP and the nationalist nutters that are clogging up the internet is that the CCP, at least, knows that what its peddling is çráp. Talk to anyone you meet on the street, and its like taking a time warp back to the 19th century.

Lots of insight, and even more ideological pique!

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Joshua at OFK must be one of the few intelligible pundits on the planet who still seriously takes the CIA at its word. From Total Wonkerr: «Too bad there isn't some international agency with the capacity to provide an independent assessment of this sort of thing…»

Well, perhaps ACW can give us some technical details?

Despite early press reports that the fuel channels atop the Al Kibar reactor core were identical to Yongbyon, I and others — including Geoff Forden, Cheryl Rofer and Richard Wendland — see some pretty significant differences that suggest Al Kibar might have been quite a bit smaller than its North Korean cousin.

To be clear, I don't doubt that Al Kibar was a reactor and, although I think the evidence of North Korean involvement is less impressive than early press reports suggested, that's my working hypothesis too.

But I don't understand the claim that Al Kibar is a copy of Yongbyon in the strict sense — in particular, I don't understand how the IC concluded that Al Kibar is the same size as Yongbyon.

Noah Schachtman is still calling it a 'mystery'.

So, there's something to wait for. If, that is, you don't just believe the CIA!

The problem with a compromise, that it satisfies no one's moral beliefs all the more that it is reasonable. For instance, how do we confront PRC's human rights problem?

The most successful human rights engagement with China—such as that of John Kamm, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong who has intervened on behalf of hundreds of political prisoners—is characterized by what one might call respectful tenaciousness. Trying to crack Chinese Internet censorship or highlighting the cases of those mistreated for seeking to advance the rule of law or exercise free speech, for instance, is always appropriate. But so is applauding China's attempts to control corruption or experiment with local elections.

Effective human rights work requires two things. First, it requires a tragic sense of history—a recognition that, no matter what we do, we will never be able to save everyone from misery or suffering. Sometimes, for example, despite its immense power and resources, the U. S. government's own ability to influence human rights is limited, and its willingness to do so in a bold way is compromised by competing interests. We who care about human rights would do well to recognize that and shape our recommendations to the U.S. government accordingly. Otherwise, we risk even greater marginalization than we already experience.

But secondly, good human rights work requires persistence and a long view, the recognition that human rights have become the lingua franca for much of the world and a ticket of admission to widely honored membership in the international community. The United States with its plummeting approval ratings around the globe has learned that the hard way. China too will learn eventually that the best way to avert hurt feelings is to avoid prompting criticism in the first place.

I'm almost certain none will like this suggestion.

Image by peace chicken via Flickr

There has already been much discussion about the remaining mysteries surrounding the Syrian plutonium-generation reactor. My own guess (and it is just a guess) is that the Syrian reactor was the fruit of a three-way partnership composed of Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Iran provided the money, idea, and leadership. Iran ordered Syria to provide the site and some of the labor. North Korea provided the expertise, for which Iran paid (directly or indirectly) in cash.

But where Westhawk is even more helpful is the other half of his post: , the NPT system is broken, so he asks, «What will replace the broken NPT-IAEA system?» I would argue that the system is fundamentally sound, if only nuclear powers with intelligence assets would share information and let the IAEA do its job.

The challenge of proliferation control lies not in the lack of proven techniques but in the absence of moral suasion and sustained diplomacy by the world leaders. The American government subsidized the spread of nuclear knowledge through the Atoms for Peace program to counter Soviet influence, and at virtually every critical juncture since then successive administrations have set aside long-term proliferation goals in favor of short-term strategic priorities. (Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets, and How We Could Have Stopped Him, p. 1844, Palm e-book)

Collins and Frantz advocate the following proposals to fix the system:

• a moratorium on enriched uranium;
• revision of the NPT, including eliminating the right to opt-out and a UN commitment to sanction violators;
• the reduction of nuclear arsenals and a moratorium on the creation of a new generation of weapons;
• restrictions on sales of nuclear technology;
• monitoring of civilian nuclear industries;
• intelligence-sharing

With the exception of sanctions, which are generally a worse remedy than the problems they seek to cure, this is a sane international nuclear policy