BOOKS-US: When Neocons Ruled Washington

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Michael Flynn

GENEVA, Dec 16 (IPS) – In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been ”colossally erroneous” and ”disastrous to U.S. interests”, that the Iraq War is a ”blunder of colossal proportions”, and that an attack on Iran is a ”highly likely” ”disaster” unless the country ”eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy”.

It is hard to argue with these points. But the book’s relentless, partisan rhetoric serves to confirm what is obvious from its title: ”The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel” is yet another treatise on the pernicious influence of the neocons on foreign policy.

So many studies have been penned on this subject that the noted international relations scholar Robert Jervis, in a 2005 review of a similar book, wrote that ”one may wonder whether more is needed”.

Sniegoski’s contribution is to thoroughly review the mountain of material already published on the neocons to support a thesis held by many war critics — that neocons, abetted by the 9/11 attacks and their supporters within the administration, were able to ”gain control” of U.S. policy.
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Popularity: 81% [?]

SPECIAL SERIES: Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Gareth Porter*

TEHRAN, Dec 15 (IPS) – Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, ”Yes, but…”

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there’s a big difference between Iranian and U.S. ideas of what such an accord would look like.

Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed here indicate that an agreement would only be possible if it represented a fundamental change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Iranian officials and analysts see the problem of U.S.-Iranian relations as a seamless web of issues on which agreement must be reached as a whole. And in addition to the bilateral issues of normal diplomatic and economic relations, they see a new U.S.-Iranian understanding on the Middle East as essential.
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Popularity: 91% [?]

RIGHTS: Bipartisan U.S. Panel Offers Blueprint to Prevent Genocide

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) – A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority.

In a report released here Monday, the group, which was co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton’s Pentagon chief, William Cohen, and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, argued that mass atrocities threaten core U.S. national interests and that the national security bureaucracy should be reformed to reflect that priority.

Its release came on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 20th anniversary of its final ratification by the United States.
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Popularity: 89% [?]

US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end.

Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover, some observers believe that Iraq may be able to hold them legally accountable for offences allegedly committed even before the SOFA was approved.

And, at the other end of the U.S-Iraq equation, after months of seeming inactivity — marked by continuing doubts about whether the U.S. even has legal jurisdiction over the contractors — the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may soon bring charges against three to six contractor-employed security guards for their involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.
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Popularity: 96% [?]

Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition

Republished with permission on the Global Intelligence News
A Global Geopolitics Net Site

PDA, Project on Defense Alternatives
5 December 2008

Read the full article in pdf format with graphs and charts on the PDA site.

The US defense policy paradox: less security at increasing cost

The United States is entering a critical period of policy transition. Beginning with the advent of the Obama administration, and continuing through the end of 2010, all of America’s national security and defense planning guidance will be revised. Certainly the need for change is broadly felt by the public. And it is not difficult to understand why.

Recent defense policy evinces a disturbing paradox: it has been delivering less and less security at ever increasing cost. With national defense expenditures approaching $700 billion per year, the United States today accounts for about 46 percent of all military spending worldwide – up from 28 percent in 1986. Approximately 440,000 US troops are presently stationed or deployed overseas, which is close to the number overseas at the end of the Cold War. But, in no area of concern has this prodigious effort produced substantial or sure progress – not in the “war on terrorism”, weapon proliferation, relations with allies, relations with China and Russia, or in the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Mideast, or Africa. Indeed, the world seems less stable and more polarized today than it did in 2001. And anti-Americanism is at a level not seen since the Vietnam war years.

On a world scale, what parallels the present paradox in US security policy is a process of global re-polarization and re-militarization. If unchecked, this portends a return to conditions reminiscent of the Cold War, with the world consciously divided into contesting nation-state and “civilizational” blocks. Such an eventuality would fuel arms races, weapon proliferation, and conflict potentials. In this light, the process of re-polarization and re-militarization might be considered the greatest threat to our security and global peace over the next 50 years. The challenge this poses for US policy makers is to find ways to address current security problems that do not inadvertently or unnecessarily feed re-polarization and re-militarization.

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Popularity: 36% [?]

The ‘Other’, Older Palestinian Coup D’etat

Global Intelligence News

By Nicola Nasser*

Failing to substantiate for the President of the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, a credible “legal” basis to extend his term from the Basic Law, which is the constitutional terms of reference that govern the rotation of power and the renewal of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the PA, Abbas in his capacity as the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) convened the rubber stamping Fatah –dominated Central Council (CC) of the PLO in the West Bank city of Ramallah to elect him also President of the State of Palestine on November 23.

The move could have been the last “constitutional” resort to extend his term as PA president before it expires on January 9 next year in order to secure himself as the supreme “legitimate” authority on Palestinian decision –making in the context of the “make – or – break” bloody wrangling with the rival Hamas on the leadership of the Palestinian national movement.
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Popularity: 44% [?]

U.S.: Mumbai Massacre Seen as Major Blow to Regional Strategy

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – A week after the massacre of more than 170 people by armed militants in Mumbai, U.S. officials are scrambling to prevent the incident from blowing up into a full-fledged confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent Wednesday in meetings with Indian leaders in New Delhi warning them that any retaliation could result in ”unintended consequences or difficulties”, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, Adm. Michael Mullen, was in Islamabad pressing top Pakistani civilian and military officials to fully cooperate with any investigation.

He also urged them to crack down hard against any groups — almost certainly the officially banned Lashka-e-Taiba (LeT), according to government and independent analysts here — found to be responsible.
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Popularity: 32% [?]

US-MIDEAST: Regional Players Key to Salvaging Peace Process

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – One of the biggest foreign policy challenges facing the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama will be reinvigorating what looks like a completely stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Repeated failures in the struggle for peace make clear that a change in direction is needed. And many observers think that taking advantage of the Arab Peace Initiative put forward by the Arab League in 2002 is just the ticket to jumpstarting the process.

A push by Pres. George W. Bush in the final year of his two-term presidency yielded the Annapolis process which, though having made minimal procedural gains and bringing in regional players, largely ignored the existing Arab proposal spearheaded by then-Crown Prince and now King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

The Annapolis track ended up failing to meet its own goals of having an agreement signed by the end of Bush’s time in office.
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Popularity: 36% [?]

RIGHTS: Ret. Officers Urge Obama to Expunge ”Stain of Torture”

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 3 (IPS) – As a group of retired military leaders prepared to urge U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to quickly put an end to the harsh interrogation practices inflicted on security prisoners, a new United Nations report charged that Iraqi authorities were committing ”grave human rights violations” in their treatment of thousands of detainees.

”Grave human rights violations … remain unaddressed,” the U.N. report said. It cited ”ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amid pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses.”

The U.N. report cast doubt on whether Iraq will be prepared to professionally manage control over thousands of security detainees now in U.S. custody under a new security pact that would end the U.S. mission there by 2012. Approved by Iraq’s parliament last week, the agreement mandates that U.S. forces transfer to Iraqi custody all detainees believed to be a major threat and to release the rest ”in a safe and orderly manner”.
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Popularity: 20% [?]

U.S.: Obama Urged to Quickly Engage Iran, Syria

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (IPS) – The incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama should move quickly to engage Iran without preconditions and to promote an Israeli-Syrian peace accord, according to two veteran Middle East experts whose views are likely to have influence over Obama’s just-announced foreign policy team.

Obama should also ”make a serious effort from the outset to promote progress between Israel and the Palestinians,” propose its own solutions to the parties ”sooner rather than later”, and enlist the active support of the Arab League in its success, according to Richard Haass and Martin Indyk, senior Middle East aides under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, respectively.

They also called for Obama to consider providing nuclear guarantees and enhanced anti-ballistic missile defence capabilities to Israel if negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear programme fail or do not achieve quick success in order to dissuade the Jewish state from attacking Tehran’s nuclear facilities on its own. Such an umbrella could also extend to Washington’s Arab allies in part to prevent a regional arms race.
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Popularity: 29% [?]

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