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By Bal(t)imoron, 16 days ago

Dayr az-Zwar Cipher

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4 comments

Gravatar #4. Bal(t)imoron
15 days ago

@Joshua:

If picayune reforms make the UN palatable to conservatives, so much the better. Every useful reform validates it. But, if Bolton, or the CIA, insist upon turf battles and slicing off chunks of the IAEA's authority to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then replace it with less effective and more manageable ad hoc organizations, like the PSI or the «League of Democracies», then any tin-pot dictator can do that. I thought Americans could persevere and outshine their opponents! Conservatives just turn tail and take their marbles elsewhere!

Gravatar #3. Joshua
15 days ago

You mean the John Bolton who created the Proliferation Security Initiative, and who almost single-handedly restored the UN to a modicum of effectiveness by shaming them into passing resolutions 1695 and 1718? Do tell. I'd take that record over al-Baradei's with, say, Ahmedinehad any day of the week.

Gravatar #2. Bal(t)imoron
15 days ago

Firstly, the IAEA is only ineffective because national intelligence agencies keep intelligence to themselves. The sresult of this was that AQ Khan operated since the 1970s while successive Democratic and Republican administrations allowed Pakistan to acquire the abilities both to make nukes and proliferate. IAEA inspectoers, which include former American officials, and congressional staffers did reasonably good job of investigating and applying sanctions, but national inteligence agencies held in many instances the smoking guns that would have allowed the IAEA really to close down several operations. Conservatives, like John Bolton, need to answer why they endangered global efforts to reduce nukes, or at least offered a pragmatic compromise that would have allowed the IAEA or other IGOs the ability to enforce international law.

The current problem is a sideshow created by this ideological pique. The US can provide the information and the IAEA can mobilize regulation and enforcement with more authority with US support. Together a global problem is solvable, not one case at a time. The one state that has too many nukes (US), and the state that hides its nukes (Israel) have little moral authority to dictate nuclear proliferation policy. That this issue has metastasized is a reflection of how the US has followed an ineffective anti-proliferation policy and refused to lead a global effort.

Gravatar #1. Joshua
15 days ago

So let me get this straight. You're alarmed that the CIA didn't share its classified intelligence with an organization as self-evidently ineffective as the IAEA, for which we have no legal recourse if they leak.

Yet you're apparently unconcerned that the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees were stonewalled for seven months.

By the way, some challenge to you as to WangKon, since you apparently adopt his theory by reference -- support, please?

Finally, given the pretty strong rhetoric from Joe Biden, Silvestre Reyes, and Lawrence Gelb, your assertion that it's «conservatives» who have infused this debate with partisanship are flimsy. But even if you didn't consider that evidence, I'm missing the partisanship in conservatives being principled enough to attack co-partisans for the same valid reasons they attacked the first Agreed Framework. Wouldn't you agree that it's the conservatives who attacked Clinton in 1994 but hold their tongues now who are being partisan?

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    • Bal(t)imoron: @Joshua: If picayune reforms make the UN palatable to conservatives, so much the better. Every useful reform validates it. But, if Bolton, or the CIA, insist upon turf battles and slicing off chunks of the IAEA's authority to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then replace it with less effective and more manageable ad hoc...

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