Time for a 21st Century US Foreign Policy

 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/24-8

Published on Monday, March 24, 2014 by Common Dreams

Time for a 21st Century US Foreign Policy

by Alice Slater

 

With 16,000 of the world’s 17,000 nuclear bombs in the US and Russia, the US should certainly not be fanning the fires for a new cold war after the distressing events in Crimea and the Ukraine.  

Rather, we should acknowledge our broken promise to Gorbachev that we wouldn’t expand NATO if Russia didn’t object to a reunified Germany’s entry into NATO when the wall came down, and promise not to invite the Ukraine or Georgia to become members of our old Cold War military alliance.  

We should be disbanding NATO and working for reform of the UN system so that it can fulfill its peacekeeping mission without archaic reliance on regional military competitive alliances.   Further, we should remove our missiles from Poland, Romania and Turkey and negotiate the space weapons ban which China and Russia repeatedly proposed, and which only the US blocked for several years in the UN’s committee on Disarmament in Geneva which requires consensus.  

We should also reinstate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which Bush walked out of in 2001 and take up Russia’s offer to negotiate a treaty to ban cyberwarfare, which it proposed after the US boasted about its virus attack on Iran’s enrichment facilities and which the US rejected out of hand.  

We need to stop being the world’s bully, as described last week by Jack Matlock, Reagan and Bush’s Ambassador to Russia who has examined our provocative actions towards Russia which resulted in these terrible events in Crimea.

It’s ironic that Obama is now in the Hague at his third “Nuclear Security Summit” to talk about locking down and securing loose bomb-making materials, without any discussion about how to honor our Non-Proliferation Treaty promise to eliminate our massive nuclear arsenal, for which we are planning to spend $640 billion over the next ten years for two new bomb factories, and new lethal delivery systems—missiles, planes, submarines.

The sad history of our bad faith relationships with Gorbachev and Putin and our aggressive military provocations, including today’s announcement that NATO will be doing military war games in Poland, will do nothing to make our world a safer, more peaceful place.

The US needs more creative 21st century thinking on how to relate to the rest of the world.

 

My friend Nelly's poem in response to the chaos in Ukraine:

Into?
Neras, 3/6/2014
The word, democracy,
(Not a new concept by any means)
Is in the pipeline, though the
Conduit is no peace pipe.
Instead, flatulent gasses
Of controlling interests

Poison the air, destroy the forests,
Pollute the waters, all neatly labeled
“Freedom and Progress” wrapped
In blankets contaminated with
Modern plagues
Damp still, with innocent tears

The simple folk, everyday dreamers,
Turned GMO fodder,
Waiting,
Struggling
In the digestive track
Of the world
To recombine the poison gasses
Into…?

My letter to the editor of the NY TIMES
March 7, 2014

Re: Natural Gas as a Diplomatic Tool

Does the Times really believe that America should be “heralding the rise of a new era of energy diplomacy” by beefing up our oil and gas sales to Europe and boasting about our huge potential to export carbon-laden filthy fuel to Russia’s fossil fuel customers as a way to curb Putin? Is this a rational solution to the disturbing events in Ukraine? Pour more carbon into the environment and watch the earth’s ecosystems collapse! Pick your poison—nuclear war or catastrophic climate change!! The follow up editorial to this tone deaf reporting, “Natural Gas as a Diplomatic Tool”, is even more cynical, arguing for speeding up export applications and easing restrictions, knowing it would take years and costs billions of dollars. Advising that “American officials should use natural gas exports as one component of diplomacy” is like selling smallpox laden blankets to the indigenous people of America. It’s a death sentence for our planet and the billions should be spent instead on a Manhattan Project for solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy which can power the whole planet by 2050 and undercut so many of the geopolitical resource-driven motives for war.

A FRIEND FROM INDIA ASKED WHAT IS A "FAIR" CTBT?
(Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty)

MY REPLY:

In answer to your question, What’s a “fair” CTBT?”, a fair CTBT would forbid laboratory testing of nuclear weapons and sub-critical underground tests where plutonium is blown up with high explosives to help in designing and improving nuclear weapons even though there’s no chain reaction.  The US has done 26 of them since we signed the treaty and Russia does them at Novaya Zemlya. The US has been modernizing and designing new nuclear weapons, regardless of the CTBT.    I’m not sure about China.   France closed its test site but it and the UK do laboratory tests on nuclear designs.   So the original P-5  have a technological advantage over the new members of the nuclear club and that’s the reason that India gave when it blocked consensus in the Committee on Disarmament when the test ban was negotiated.  India’s Ambassador Ghosh argued at that time that if the CTBT didn’t forbid laboratory testing and other advanced technology India would vote against it.   Amazingly, for the first time in history, Ambassador Richard Butler of Australia brought the treaty to the UN for signature, breaking all precedent by acting without consensus.   Shortly thereafter, India did its underground nuclear tests, swiftly followed by Pakistan.  (India quietly acquired the bomb in 1974 or so, but did not want to be left behind in the high-tech race for bigger and better bombs.) The US plans to spend one trillion dollars over the next 30 years to build two new bomb factories, new planes, missiles and submarines to deliver their lethal payloads,  and to keep the immoral nuclear weapons complex up and running! 

Astonishingly, the CD is looking to break consensus again for only the second time in history, rather than let Pakistan block the negotiations on a treaty to cut off fissile material production for weapons purposes!! Yet when the US was the only country to block consensus in the CD on beginning negotiations on a treaty to ban weapons in space, proposed for several years by Russia and China, no one threatened to override consensus to bring it to the General Assembly for negotiation as was done with the CTBT and as nations are threatening to do with the FMCT.   It’s time to give the old colonial boys network a taste of their own medicine and disregard consensus and bring the space treaty to the UN for negotiations.   And everyone should be calling for nuclear disarmament and a total halt to the new weapons development going on despite the CTBT, the NPT. Indeed, I hope India and Pakistan will come to the nuclear disarmament meeting hosted by Mexico on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, just as they were the only nuclear weapons states to attend the Oslo meeting last year.    Let’s hope we can come out of Mexico this year with a mandate to negotiate a treaty to ban the bomb, followed by a nuclear weapons convention to provide for their total elimination.   Let’s give the earth a Valentine in Mexico on February 14^th.   Let’s tell Mother Earth we love her and come out of that meeting with worldwide call to our governments to abolish nuclear weapons.  Perhaps Asia will lead the way!! 

 FOR INFO ABOUT MEXICO AND HOW TO GET YOUR GOVERNMENT TO GO, SEE:

http://www.icanw.org/conference-on-the-humanitarian-impact-of-nuclear-weapons/

 

On the Death of Shulamit Aloni

 

I met Shulamit Aloni when I went to visit Israel in 1976 as part of my job working as a fundraiser for ADL.  As part of our Jewish education, ADL set up meetings for our group of 8 American ADLers to learn about all aspects of Israeli life.   We had lunch with Rabin; visited with Myron Ben Venisti an important scholar and thinker; saw the first settlement in Hebron settled by Jews from Brooklyn and Chicago affiliated with Meir Kahane; and were scolded by Shulamit Aloni, who came on like gangbusters, like Bela Abzug with a Hebrew accent,  saying “you American Jews!   You’re such hypocrites!!  Don’t you people  know we have a Peace Now party?!   Why do you support every stupid  thing this government does?!”   It was news to me!   I had never heard a critical word about Israel before.  

When we met the settler in Hebron, an American from Chicago wearing a yarmulke and living in an apartment building in the midst of a city teeming with Arabs, surrounded by Israeli soldiers with guns,  I asked him why he was living here with his wife and children in the middle of hostile territory    After all, Israel had just returned the Sinai to Egypt and how would Israel make peace if they were settling in these all-Arab cities?   He replied, “We don’t care.   The bible says Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people!”  I thought to myself, “You are a dead man.”  This is what Shulamit Aloni was warning us about in 1976  I am so sad to learn of her passing.

See, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.570523

US Rejects Rule of Law: Proposes Space "Code of Conduct" Instead of Binding Treaty

The most important lesson one can acquire about US foreign policy is the understanding that our leaders do not mean well. They do not have any noble goals of democracy and freedom and all that jazz. They aim to dominate the world by any means necessary. And as long as an American believes that the intentions are noble and honorable, it's very difficult to penetrate that wall. That wall surrounds the thinking and blocks any attempt to make them realize the harm being done by US foreign policy.  William Blum, former member of the US State Department, author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II[i]

More than 5,000 satellites have been launched into orbit since the space age began[ii]. Today, eleven countries have space launch capability, with over sixty countries operating about 1,100 active satellites orbiting the earth providing a constant stream of data and information relied upon for critical civilian communications as well as for military operations by some.[iii]   As we grow ever more dependent on the ability of these satellites to perform their essential functions without interruption, there are growing concerns that this useful technology is giving rise to a new battleground in space for the purpose of sabotaging or destroying the vital services our space-based communications now provide.  

The US and Russia have been testing anti-satellite technology (ASAT) since the space age began, and have even contemplated using  nuclear tipped ballistic missiles to destroy space assets.    In 1967, the US and Russia  realized it would be in their interest to support the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which banned the placement of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in space, although they failed to ban the use of conventional weapons in space.   And in 1972 they agreed to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) to slow down the space race and the ability to harm each other’s assets in space.  Unfortunately, George Bush walked out of the ABM treaty in 2002, and the race to weaponize space was on once again in full force.  China is getting into the act too, having launched, in 2007, a device which destroyed one of its aging weather satellites orbiting in space.   The US followed suit in 2008, destroying a non-functioning satellite, while both nations denied any military mission for their acts, claiming they were merely trying to destroy outdated satellites that no longer functioned.

With the proliferation of military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites and ballistic missile and anti- missiles systems which often pass through outer space, there have been numerous efforts in the UN Committee on Disarmament (CD) to outlaw the weaponization of space through a legally binding treaty.    But the United States is having none of it.  In the CD, which requires consensus to take action, the US has been the only nation to block every vote to begin negotiations on such a treaty, with Israel generally abstaining in support.   Russia and China actually prepared a draft treaty to ban weapons in space in 2008, but the US blocked the proposal, voting against it each year thereafter when it was reintroduced for consideration, saying the proposal was “a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage”.[iv]

While continuing to block a legally binding treaty to ban weapons in space, the US has recently begun to work with a group of nations in a new initiative that began in the European Union in 2008, proposing a “Code of Conduct  for Outer Space Activities“  which would lay out a non-binding set of rules of the road for a safer and more responsible environment in space.  Some of its key objectives are to mitigate damage to satellites that could be caused by space debris orbiting the earth,  to avoid the potential of destructive collisions, and to manage the crowding of satellites and the saturation of the radio-frequency spectrum, as well as to address direct threats of hostility to assets in space. [v]   At first, the US rejected any support for the Code, but has now agreed to participate in drafting a new version based on the third iteration from the European Union.   Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, acknowledged in 2012 the necessity for a Code to deal with orbital debris and “other irresponsible actions in space”,  while at the same time, noting that,

 It is important to clarify several points with respect to the code. It is still under development, we would not subscribe to any code unless it protects and enhances our national security, and the code would not be legally binding. [vi] 

In addition, the US is insisting on a provision in this third version of the Code of Conduct that, while making a voluntary promise to “refrain from any action which brings about, directly or indirectly, damage, or destruction, of space objects”, qualifies that directive with the language “unless such action is justified”. One justification given for destructive action is “the Charter of the United Nations including the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense”, thus lending legitimacy and codifying the possibility for warfare in space as part of the Code’s established norm.  And while the Charter of the United Nations prohibits aggressive action by any nation without Security Council approval unless a nation acts in self-defense, we know there have been numerous occasions where nations have by-passed the Security Council to take aggressive action, often protesting they were acting in self-defense.   Instead of banning ASAT development and warfare, this Code justifies such warfare as long as it’s done, individually and collectively, under the guise of “self-defense”.   Thus despite lacking the force of law that would be established with a legally binding treaty, this new US version of the Code creates, as the norm it is proposing, a possibility for space warfare.   Our world deserves better!  

---

[i] William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (2003) (Common Courage Press) http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20869-our-leaders-do-not-mean-well

[ii] http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/a-history-of-ASAT-programs_lo-res.pdf

[iii] http://www.cfr.org/space/code-conduct-outer-space/p26556

[iv] http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Resources/Factsheets/outerspace.pdf

[v] http://eeas.europa.eu/non-proliferation-and-disarmament/outer-space-activities/index_en.htm

[vi] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/opinion/a-code-for-outer-space-as-seen-from-the-state-dept.html?_r=0

 

REMEMBERING NELSON MANDELA

 

I remember when we learned that Nelson Mandela was planning to make his farewell address to the United Nations, our Abolition 2000 Network organized an international letter writing campaign to him to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons in his UN speech. Sure enough, the London Guardian reported on its front page, Nelson Mandela Calls for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons! In his speech he actually said "what do they need them for anyway?" I only hope that we can honor and remember the enormous contribution he made to peace when he used the truth and reconciliation process he started as President of South Africa to avoid bloodshed and dedicate ourselves to making that process work for Syria, for Israel-Palestine, and other troubled spots on our beleaguered planet. Let us truly honor him by putting revenge and war behind us in a more peaceful world!

See, http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/1998/09/21_mandela.htm

See how the NY Times handled the story compared to the London Guardian, in a somewhat longer piece about the news and how it’s reported.
http://globalhousework.blogspot.com/2011/02/nixon-in-china-max-frankel-and-me.html