Saturday, June 29, 2002
Russia backsdown on Iranian nuclear powerplant
The Russian government backs down in the ongoing dispute about selling critical technology to Iran for a nuclear power plant. The US government has used heavy pressure on the Russians to make them stop selling strategically important technology.
Iran is believed to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
According to STRATFOR sources inside the Russian government, President Putin decided to stop the delivery to the Iranian Bushehr power plant.
The Guardian reported on June 24th that Russia did not get Iranian guaranties that the used nuclear energy material would get back to Russia. The paper obtained Russian documents saying: "The question of managing the spent nuclear fuel is absent in the agreement between the governments of Russia and Iran on the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant on Iranian territory.
"Negotiations are taking place on the return of the spent nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation."
Iran raised therewith the suspicion that they want to use the material otherwise, likely for developing a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).
As early as march 2001 the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declared that the US Government is already from the start critical on Russian sales of advanced and sensitive weapons technology to Iran. In a statement he said Russia should think twice.
After 9/11 the US government has been very strong on the non- proliferation of WMD. On his latest tour through Europe President Bush raised the issue of proliferation to Iran with President Putin. On may 26th, on a press conference after meeting President Chirac, a presidential spokesman said that discussions on sending inspectors to Iran had been one of the options discussed with President Putin.
Iran is, according to the Bush administration one of the three countries labeled as the "Axis of Evil". The others are North Korea and Iraq. For the US it is of strategical importance that Iran does not get the possession of a nuclear bomb. It could use the nuclear capability against Israel or other allies in the region. It would change the balance of power considerably.
Friday, June 28, 2002
US Democratic leader on a sensible US Foreign Policy
After 9/11 the US foreign policy became, in the eyes of Europeans, dominated by President Bush. He determines in effect as president the policies of his country, but the opposition isn't without a voice in the US congress.
The democratic leader Richard Gephardt for instance held a speech recently at the Woodrow Wilson Institute on his foreign policy views. In his speech he emphasized not only the fight against terrorism, but also additional foreign policy instruments in the post Cold War era. His views seems to be from a broader perspective than Bush's "fight on terrorism".
“Some people have suggested that we stop using the term ‘foreign aid.’ I agree. We should remake and rename it. Traditional foreign aid may have worked as a Cold War construct, but our goal now should be what I call American Partnerships. We should work closely with countries that want to improve bilateral relations and benefit their people, and insist that these relationships are true partnerships based on shared values.
“If we can help create a world with more economic growth, better health care, stronger education, and more human rights, particularly for women, we will be fulfilling an essential part of our foreign policy.
“Let me outline three qualities that should comprise this strategy.
“Economic development, democracy, and universal education.
The world may hope that a more bi- partisan approach will win the Presidents mind.
Gephardt speech
Also Michael Barone on Gephardt: The loyal opposition
European Online Journalism Shortlist
Netmedia released recently the shortlist for the best Online Journalism Awards, to be presented on the 4th of July in London.
Remarkable is that no quality weblogs are on the list.
NetMedia Shortlist
What about Islam and Secular Society?
Azzam Tamimi discusses and describes the secularization in the Islamic history and its relation to western "Christian" secularization.
His is the writer of a book on Rachid Ghannouchi.
This article is an introduction to the book. He describes in short the difficult relationship between Islam and secularism and why Muslims should turn to it:
One of the great accomplishments of secularism is the space it provides for pluralism and a reasonable degree of coexistence. Muslims should recognize that the presence of millions of them in majority non-Muslim societies today, for the first time in such big numbers, is the fruit of several factors including the secularist revolution which liberated the state from the hegemony of the church. In fact until an Islamic shura (consensual) system of government is established, the second best alternative for Muslims is a secular democratic. Under such a system of governance, it is agreed to respect the fundamental rights of all people without discrimination and without commitment to a religious frame of reference. What matters in such a system is that despotism is checked.
Dr. Azzam Tamimi founded an institution to renew Islamic political thought on the notion of a new secularism for the Islam. Ghannouchi is one of the few spiritual leaders who built his thought on the notion of secularism.
Institute of Islamic Political Thought
Guardian and Weblogging
The Guardian was quick to get the trend and has a good weblog section already, with the opportunity to sent them quality weblogs. What they are doing with them is still unclear.
Guardian Weblog
Newspapers and Weblogging
The rise of the Weblog fenomenon gives Newspapers a new chance to gaine audience attention on the internet. They have to make some quicke and farreaching decisions though, like giving every reporter its own weblog. Publishers must think about things like this, argues Steve Outing in Editor & Publisher.
Debat Europese Conventie
De debatten in Nederland over de toekomst van de Europese Unie in het kader van de Europese Conventie zijn tamelijk schaars. Het publiek lijkt weinig interesse te tonen en in de kranten verschijnen zelden artikelen.
Hier twee artikelen van de hand van medewerkers van Instituut Clingendael.
Hervorming Europese top is onvermijdelijk door Peter van Grinsven en Jan Melissen
Burgers zijn gebaat bij een centrale rol voor de Europese Commissie door A. van Staden.
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Europese Conventie op weg
De Europese Conventie is goed en wel op weg. De Nederlandse vertegenwoordiger van Mierlo hield enkele toespraken en gaf een hoorcollege voor studenten uit Leiden. Al deze zijn te vinden op de site van Buitenlandse zaken.
Buitenlandse zaken
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Bush: "Arafat step asside"
President Bush presented the vision of his administration for a peaceful Middle East. If you look at the everyday reality it reads like an utopian view. Peace among peoples, no more killing and terrorism and two states that work together in an environment in which Arabs and Israelis' strive toward good capitalist and democratic societies.
Yes, mister President a balancing act. But how do you want to achieve all these beautiful visions?
The french former foreign minister Vedrine argued in a piece in the Washington Post that a successful plan had to meet two conditions. The first was US military involvement. No word of that in the Bush speech. The other condition is to set a date on which a viable Palestinian state is created. Bush names a vague three year period, but is that a date set for his reelection or is it a date set for a reread of his speech?
Bush is absolutely right in his demand of the Palestinian Authority to elect a new leadership. Arafat should go. He is a leader who has not to been able to transform from a freedom fighter into a statesman who is committed to building a nation. He has proved to be an old fashioned Arabian autocrat.
K 19: The Cold War enemy according to Hollywood
After becoming President, JF Kennedy stepped up the cold war rhetoric and increased the US defence spending. Khruschchev on the other side detested Kennedy and he wanted to test him. The best know test was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
With the cold war over, some incredible stories come out in the open. One of the more horrifying stories is the fate of the K 19. The first Russian nuclear submarine that was send in 1961 by Khruschchev on a mission to show Kennedy that the Russians were able to strike the American homeland with nuclear missiles launched from submarines.
Hollywood embraced the story and made it into a cold war disaster movie, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
Ford plays Captain Nikolai Zateyev, the commander who lead the K 19 into disaster during its maiden voyage. Neeson is the executive commander in whom the crew have total confidence.
The story line is quite simple. In the opening sequence the crew aboard the K 19 is preparing a launch of a nuclear missile, which is aborted due to a technical failure. It turns out to be a realistic drill, but it sets the tone for the rest of the film. Neeson, the respected commander, opposes higher ranking navy officers. Featuring further is a ship that doesn't work properly at critical moments due to inadequate materials.
In the mean time Ford gets the assignment to bring the K 19 close to the American coast to be observed intentionally by American reconnaissance planes, so Kennedy will know that the Russians can strike their homeland.
On its voyage commander Ford takes the sub and her crew to the edge of its capability. He doesn't make a lot of friend aboard, but he is a man with a mission, who's father was a well known officer in the navy who ended up in the gulag.
Half way, the nuclear engine breaks down and a melt down is immanent. To fix the reactor the crew has to do some bricolage to the reactor. Some men have to go in and attach a pipe so cold water can cool down the over heating system.
Commander Ford doesn't want to go back, he wants to complete his mission. A nearby American frigate is prepared to give assistance, but Ford doesn't want to give in to the enemy. The situation is quite hopeless and the crew knows it. Ford rules like a captain Ahab and than you can be sure that there is a thread of mutiny. The political officer takes commander Ford in chains and gives Neeson the command. He expects him to ask assistance from the US vessel, so the contaminated ship can be abandoned.
Neeson doesn't give in to mutiny and stands by his senior officer. Just in time a Russian rescue sub arrives. The ship is abandoned and tugged back to Russia. The end of the pride of a nation.
The most striking thing about K 19, the movie, is the way Hollywood portrays the former enemy as heroes, proud and patriotic. The Russians are not portrayed as the evil enemy, but as contestants with their peculiar faults that causes them in the end to lose the cold war.
After annexing the Second World War by producing endless streams of "German" war movies, Hollywood turns now to the cosy cold war. A time when the enemy was a well defined entity and not some diffuse network like Al Qaida. An enemy that had a similar army which happened not to be as good as the American.
It is hard to determine if the story is accurately historical. It appears to be so. The disaster scenes are exiting and the fixing of the reactor scenes are horrific. Ford and Neeson play their role well, although the Russian accent they use doesn't let us forget that they are in fact well paid Hollywood stars.
K 19 The Widowmaker (IMDb) | National Geographic | ZAP2it | K-19: The Widowmaker: The Secret Story... Amazon | Official site
Monday, June 24, 2002
The Comming Ice Age
Andrew Kenny has an unorthodox opinion on Global Warming. It is much more likely that a new ice age will develop. Heavy carbon dioxide industries prevent the new ice age and are therefor good in itself.
The spectator
The lack of everyday heroes seems to turn women on to football and especially the World Cup. Beckham is Tania Kindersley's (The Spectator)top hero, but what about Francisco Totti, the one and only Jupiter, the God who failed.
Here, I think, is the heart of the matter — for a few hectic weeks we can see men as heroes. There are no heroes any more; we all know that, we weren’t born yesterday, we read the statistics. But women still hold an odd, secret belief in the perfectibility of the male: that is why men complain that we are always trying to change them. We see another story about a celebrity betraying his partner with a prostitute, or running off with a bimbo half his age, or being had up for domestic violence, and we feel demoralised. Women don’t want to believe men are all the same, biologically programmed to philander and break our hearts; we want to love them, because they are our sons and husbands, fathers and brothers; and to love someone well, you have to admire them.
Like in the Dutch Republic, the US is sliding towards a sharp division of wealth and power argues Kevin Philips in The Nation.
The Internet billionaires have disappeared and old money rules again.So what's new.
Czeslaw Milosz beschrijft in het Groene Essay het Ithaka gevoel dat hij kreeg toen hij na de val van de muur eindelijk weer zijn paradijselijke jeugd terug vond in Litouwen.
Prachtig essay dat alleen voor abonnees op het net te lezen is op de nieuwe website van de Groene Amsterdammer.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
So Bin Laden made it after all. It would have been stupid to die of a bomb in a stupid cave. Not very heroic.
I suspected a couple of months ago that he would be in Iraq. It still might be possible. If he is somewhere in Afghanistan the Americans will undoubtedly find him.
Now he is putting the chessboard on the table again today. Every terrorist act can be interpreted as comming from Al Qaida now.
Salon.com
From The New Statesman :The anti-imperialism of fools:
Today's fashion for Israel-bashing seems to me to represent a similar foolishness. It is not old-fashioned anti-Semitism. But there is a growing tendency to endorse dubious ideas under the guise of solidarity with the Palestinians. It is the anti-imperialism of fools.
Particularly since 11 September, a strange-looking global alliance has formed against Israel, incorporating Islamic fundamentalists, European neo-Nazis and anti-globalists. Many, in all three groups, had previously shown little interest in the plight of the Palestinians: the Israeli state has become a sort of ersatz America, a symbol of all that they hate about contemporary capitalism.
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Webcolumist Jonathan Power fully backs the Vedrine proposal. In his latest column he describes the historical background and argues that following the paece treaties that already exist, the belligerent partys fundamentally agree more and more.
The peace must be enforced now by a third party which must be inevitably the United States.
Bush must act now and he must thereby defie his right wing conservatives.
The former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine published in The Washington Post a peace proposal for the middle east. He asks, as a Frenchman and with the backing of the European public opinion, the US to take the lead in enforcing a truce in the Middle East.
Bush must act now and according to Vedrine along these lines:
(1) Commit himself to a long-term presence of U.S. forces on the ground (perhaps with troops from other countries) along the Israeli-Palestinian borders and Israel's borders with Jordan, Syria and Lebanon -- assuming the Israelis want such a military presence as part of a peace settlement.
(2) Be ready at the outset to withstand several months of opposition from the Israeli right and its allies in the United States. Despite this resistance, it will be vital to lay out the peace plan and fix a calendar and a deadline for creation of a Palestinian state.
Friday, June 21, 2002
Sharon should worry about the cult of martyrdom and death that has caught a lot of young and intelligent Palestinians. Will a new Wall be the answer? A new system of Apartheid? Or do the Israelis have no other choice?
The New York Times.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
After the 9/11 turmoil in world politics, a lot of scholars are rethinking foreign policy and the history of foreign policy.
A latest hit seems to be The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.
Jonathan Rauch reviews the book in The Atlantic.
Josh Marshall is speculating some days already on the question "who was Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal"?
His prime candidate is Pat Buchanan, the right wing former presidential candidate and aide to Ronald Reagan.
It looks like he is close to an answer.
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