The Agonist - USA: Foreign Relations

Predictions For 2009

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:53:33 -0800

Hannes asked a few days ago for thoughts on what 2009 might bring. Here are some of mine, in no particular order:

1. Franken and Burris will be seated in the next Senate.

2. Guantanamo and the other prisons will be closed.

3. Unemployment will reach double digits.

4. The stimulus package will include more tax cuts than are currently anticipated.

5. Said stimulus plan won't do much good. The infrastructure component will be too small and the build-out will take too long to help in 2009.

6. The word 'Depression' will become much more common in the media and we very well may flirt with an almost 10% retrenchment in GDP.

7. The Dow will trade below 6,000, and the S&P will trade in a similar range as the Dow as Wall Street earnings estimates finally catch up with reality.

8. Gold will not hit $1,000. The dollar will remain relatively strong in a weak overall currency environment. The Yen will remain strong as well, hurting Japanese exports even more.

9. There will be no inflation. There will be deflation.

10. Obama will govern from the center right and the left will be even more dismayed, including many of his supporters.

11. We will begin drawing down out of Iraq, but not nearly fast enough.

12. Obama will double down in Afghanistan. It will do no good.

13. Obama will not negotiate with Iran. He will be prevented/hamstrung from doing so by AIPAC and the neocons.

14. America will end the embargo against Cuba.

15. The market for treasuries will not blow up this year--we'll leave that for 2010. There is still too much debt destruction (i.e. deflation) going on, credit card defaults, among other items, are next. Domestic demand for treasuries will remain strong, even in the face of the Chinese, OPEC countries and Japan not buying.

Have I missed anything?

The Surge in Afghanistan

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:20:46 -0800

The US will soon double the number of its troops in Afghanistan from about thirty thousand to sixty thousand, and several other NATO countries will also up their troop levels. The move comes with little surprise and considerable bipartisan support, but with little public discussion of the aims and likely outcomes. Evocative as the move is with similar events in Iraq that are generally (though perhaps uncritically) credited with bringing stability there, it is hoped that a similar outcome will come about in Afghanistan, where the situation has deteriorated badly while US attention has been focused on Iraq and Iran.

What Your Government Can Do, But Won't

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:10:13 -0800

I'm with Col. Lang's correspondent on all of these ideas, especially this one:

Put together a 2 year national service program, mandatory, from ages 18 through 20 and have young people involved live overseas for part of the time. On this point, I agree with Charlie Rangel that the loss of the draft and short military service has helped us grow isolated. Anytime I meet a young person who has done an overseas stint, even for a semester, they are changed forever in the ‘my eyes are opened’ manner.

On a positive note: I have met a few (very few) young Americans on this journey that are special people, who will be changed forever by their experience.

Read the whole post. Lots of common sense.

RIGHTS: Mercenaries At Large in Colombia

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:19:05 -0800

Gustavo Capdevila | Geneva | Dec 23

IPS -

Mercenaries hired by private military and security companies are playing an increasingly broad range of roles in Latin America, such as guarding mines, borders, prisons, and now humanitarian aid, said the members of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries at a meeting in this Swiss city.

The Working Group, created in 2005 by the U.N. Human Rights Commission (subsequently replaced by the U.N. Council on Human Rights), discussed the possibility of drawing up new international legal instruments to regulate the growing activities of private military and security companies, at their meeting last week.

The use of mercenaries contravenes the United Nations International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which entered into force in 2001.

Services provided by private military and security companies cover a variety of roles.

First, there are the companies working in-country within the framework of the U.S.-financed and designed Plan Colombia, a counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy.

The curious thing about this operation is that the private contractors enjoy the same diplomatic immunity as the members of the U.S. embassy in Colombia, which exempts them from scrutiny under national laws.

"We have documented illegal acts and crimes committed by this group of contractors, but Bogotá cannot even investigate them because the bilateral agreement with Washington forbids it," Benavídes said.

Russia to abandon missile plans if US drops shield

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:22:11 -0800

Moscow | Dec 19

AFP - Moscow is ready to abandon plans for a wholesale renewal of its nuclear missile arsenal if Washington stops deployment of a controversial missile shield, a top Russian general said on Friday.

"If the Americans give up their plans to deploy the third position area and other elements of strategic missile defence, then undoubtedly we will respond in kind," said Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's strategic missile forces, quoted by Interfax news agency.

"And an array of programmes, expensive programmes, will simply not be necessary for us," he added.

The term "third position area" refers to planned US missile defence facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic that have aroused a furious reaction from Russia.

"Today we do not have ideological reasons for confrontation. And as we realise plans for the development of the strategic missile forces, we are not planning to frighten anyone," Solovtsov said.

"We are simply doing that which is called for by today's realities."

US rejects Castro dissident-prisoner exchange offer

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:20:02 -0800

Brasilia | Dec 19

AFP - Cuba's offer Thursday to release jailed political dissidents in Cuba in exchange for five Cubans convicted of spying in the United States was rejected by the State Department and Cuban rights groups.

When asked in the Brazilian capital about Cuban political dissidents, President Raul Castro responded by proposing an exchange.

"Those prisoners that you talk about -- they (the United States) want them released? Let them tell us, we'll send them over there with families and all. Let them return our five heroes. It is gesture from both sides," Castro said.

The 77-year-old also said that improved ties with the United States would not happen only through "unilateral gestures", a month before Barack Obama takes over the US presidency.

The US State Department rejected the proposal shortly afterward.

UAE to Buy Into U.S. Plan to Deploy Anti-Missile System

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:21:49 -0800

Claude Salhani | Dec 17

Middle East Times - The United Arab Emirates will become the first country in the world, other than the United States, to deploy the advanced anti-missile system THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. The Middle East Times first reported on the potential deal in its Dec. 15 edition that the United States wants to see the oil rich Gulf states purchase, install and join a unified missile defense system that would provide complete aerial coverage to the region, from Kuwait in the northern Gulf to Oman on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

The THAAD system is developed by Lockheed Martin, a U.S. company based in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. The system which has been pushed by Washington as a deterrent against Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons is "something not unlike NORAD," said a high-ranking U.S. official, who is directly involved in the planning of this project, to the Middle East Times at a security conference in Bahrain last weekend. The official asked not to be named.

The THAAD system deployed by the Emirates will become the very first such system to be operated by non-American personnel; other similar systems are already operational in Poland and Israel, but are operated by U.S. military personnel. The Emirati system will be under full Emirati control. It will include anti-missile interceptors, launchers, fire control and communications systems, radar and training, according to the Gulf News.

The Obama administration, Iran, and Israel: of carrots, sticks, and nuclear umbrellas

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:17:49 -0800

By Hannes Artens

With merely a month to go until the Obama administration will have to helm the West's more or less united front against Iranian nuclear enrichment a fierce struggle for posts, policies and priorities of/in the Obama team is raging behind the Washington scenes. Far from brought to a conclusion, let alone a policy cast in stone, the world - Tehran and Jerusalem in particular - is trying to figure out what direction the new president will follow, whether his approach will be a more conciliatory one, defined by dialogue, engagement, and an unprecedented reaching out, or rather a continuation of W.'s ham fisted cluelessness with alternating variations of speaking softly and martial rhetoric. A nut almost as hard to crack as to decode Tehran's often contradictory signs and to discern its true nuclear ambitions.

The more so as matters are not so simple. As usual, the American media wallows in simplifications and exaggerations they believe their sheepish audience appreciates: carrots and/or sticks, hawks vs. doves, a boxing match between Thomas Pickering and Dennis Ross and who wins either hosts Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for dinner at the White House or bombs the odious mullahs back into the stone age. A world view as black-and-white dominated as the one we thought we had just trashed in the dustbin of history. And one that could not be less in line with realities on the ground. In the real world outside the Situation Room the battle lines within the Obama team are far from clearly drawn and what at first sight appears a kneeling down before the neocon altar of warmongers might emerge as a smart move and a win for diplomacy on the long run. A good case in point is the "nuclear umbrella" for Israel the Obama team deliberately leaked to the press last week.

US says no more fuel shipments to NKorea until nuke verification

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:58:39 -0800

Washington | Dec 13

AFP - The United States said Friday that there would be no more fuel aid shipments to energy-strapped North Korea until Pyongyang agrees to a written plan to verify its nuclear disarmament.

The United States had warned that it would "rethink" its approach to North Korean nuclear disarmament after the latest round of six-country negotiations collapsed in Beijing on Thursday.

"The North Koreans have not come through and signed on to the verification protocol, which all other parties have agreed to," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

"Future fuel shipments will not go forward absent a verification regime," McCormack told reporters after what he called an "understanding" among the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

** China, Japan, SKorea seek resumption of NKorea talks

Pentagon's faux pas pleases Pyongyang

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:48:30 -0800

Donald Kirk | Seoul | Dec 12

Asia Times - The timing was either diabolically inept or extremely clever. Right at the outset of another round of critical if most likely unproductive six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear arms, the Pentagon had to come out with a report listing North Korea as one of "five nuclear powers" right there on "the rim of the great Asian continent ... "

The US State Department, the Pentagon and South Korea's foreign minister all came out with statements saying the reports' wording was a big mistake. The person who wrote the report was blamed for botching it, and it was quickly reiterated that in no way was, or is, North Korea a card-carrying member of the nuclear club.

But was it all such a mistake? Or was the "mistake" deliberately timed to toss the talks in Beijing into confusion and spur on the hardliners in Washington in their quest to show the futility of any talks? Was it meant to undermine the last-gasp effort of US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill to get an understanding, maybe another face-saving compromise, from the North Koreans that has a chance of surviving?

** NKorea nuclear talks collapse with no deal
** SNAP ANALYSIS-North Korea nuclear talks end with no deal

A Bush Foreign Policy Advisor Making Sense?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:37:16 -0800

Is someone in the Bush Administration actually making sense?

A senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. "Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"

The leaked idea (read: trial balloon) from the Obama camp that Israel should be put under an American nuclear umbrella is sheer stupidity. All it would do is allow Israel to throw its weight around even more in the Middle East. And that is not in our national interest. Not remotely. Even if Israel is a 'democracy.'

Obama to offer Israel 'nuclear umbrella'-newspaper

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:51:33 -0800

Jerusalem | Dec 11

Reuters - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer Israel a strategic pact designed to fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.

Haaretz, quoting an unnamed U.S. source close to Obama, said Obama's administration would pledge under the proposed "nuclear umbrella" to respond to any Iranian nuclear strike against Israel with a U.S. retaliation in kind. There was no immediate comment on the Haaretz report from Israeli officials or the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

Israel was founded partly as a haven for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, on the promise that Jews would now look to their own defence. Formally submitting to foreign protection could spell a major credibility crisis for the Israeli government.

obliterate or retaliation in kind? you say tomayto I say tomahto ;)

Troublesome regimes are big buyers of U.S. arms

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:58:46 -0800

Washington | Dec 11

Winston Salem Journal - The U.S. arms trade is booming -- sales reached $32 billion last year -- and more than half of the buyers in the developing world are either undemocratic governments or regimes engaged in human-rights abuses, a private research group reported yesterday.

Timed to the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the report by the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute, named 13 of the top 25 arms buyers in the developing world as either undemocratic or engaged in major human-rights abuses.

The 13 listed in the report were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Colombia, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia.

Sales to these countries totaled more than $16.2 billion over 2006 and 2007.

A new study by the New America Foundation “places the United States at the top of the list of the world’s leading arms-selling nations in 2007, accounting for more than 45 percent of all global weapons transfers.” The Bush administration “signed arms sales agreements…worth more than $32 billion last year, including with one or more parties involved in 20 of the world’s 27 major conflicts.”(links at Think Progress)

US gets tough on Somali pirates

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:26:08 -0800

Laura Trevelyan | Dec 11

BBC - Foreign troops supporting Somalia's government should be allowed to capture Somali pirates on land, according to a draft UN Security Council resolution.

The draft has been circulated by the US and seen by UN diplomats in New York.

Currently countries are allowed to hunt down pirates in Somalia's territorial waters but not pursue them on land.

Piracy off Somalia's coastline is rife - 120 attacks have been reported in 2008, and at least 16 ships are still being held, including a Saudi tanker.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution in June allowing countries operating with the consent of Somalia's transitional government to go into Somalia's territorial waters and use force to capture pirates.

Now the US is proposing stronger measures.

Security Council diplomats say an American-drafted resolution suggests countries should be able to pursue pirates onto land if necessary, providing the Somali government agrees.

sounds like more bloodshed for Somalia

Children 'executed' in 1950 South Korean killings

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:13:13 -0800

Charles J. Hanley & Jae-Soon Chang | Seoul | Dec 8

AP -

_{This undated photo released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea, shows human bones unearthed at a site in Oegongri. The government Truth and Reconciliation Commission excavated remains of some of about 500 civilians believed killed by South Korean troops in early 1951.(AP Photo/Truth and Reconciliation Commission)}

Government investigators digging into the grim hidden history of mass political executions in South
Korea have confirmed that dozens of children were among many thousands shot by their own government early in the Korean War.

The investigative Truth and Reconciliation Commission has thus far verified more than two dozen mass killings of leftists and supposed sympathizers, among at least 100,000 people estimated to have been hastily shot and dumped into makeshift trenches, abandoned mines or the sea after communist North Korea invaded the south in June 1950.

The killings, details of which were buried in classified U.S. files for a half-century, were intended to keep southern leftists from aiding the invaders at a time when the rightist, U.S.-allied government was in danger of being overrun by communist forces.

Family survivors last month met with the U.S. Embassy for the first time, saying afterward they demanded an apology for alleged "direct and indirect" American involvement in the killings.

Declassified records show U.S. officers were present at one killing field and that at least one U.S. officer sanctioned another mass political execution if prisoners otherwise would be freed by the North Koreans. Uncounted hundreds were subsequently killed, witnesses reported.