Archive | August, 2022

The Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA, 2015) Should be Renewed

25 Aug

[Prefatory Note: Richard Falk Responses to Questions posed by Mohamadreza Farahzadi, of the international desk of Farhikhtegan Daily pertaining to long process of rejoining this agreement limited Iran to the development of civilian nuclear power technology; the text of my responses and the title has been modified. It is one more example that undoing the human and diplomatic harm of Trump’s international legacy is a complex matter that not only exhibits the persisting influence of unrepentant Trumpists but the passivity of the Democratic Party leadership, particularly when it dares to disagree with Israel on a matter of foreign policy concern.]

1. According to the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear commitments, Tehran was fully fulfilling its obligations according to the JCPOA until the US withdrew from it. However, even after the withdrawal of the USA from the JCPOA, these approvals continued and were accepted by the existing members as well.

It seems that Iran, which started adjusting its nuclear commitments a year after the withdrawal of the USA from the JCPOA, has no problem with returning to its previous commitments. In the meantime, the only problem that is the main reason for the existence of JCPOA revival negotiations is the withdrawal of the United States from the agreement during the Trump era and its not returning during the Biden administration. Accordingly, Iran in general is only seeking guarantees so that it will not be deprived of the economic benefits of fulfilling its obligations. Why has the USA refused to return to the JCPOA?

Response: I share the view that the 2018 U.S. withdrawal from JCPOA was the sole explanation for the breakdown of the 2015 agreement, which as you suggest, was working well, with the IAEA confirming Iran’s compliance. This compliance was impressive insofar as Israel continuing to violate Iranian sovereignty by engaging unlawful and provocative ways involving further efforts to disrupt Iran’s legitimate nuclear program, including the assassination of nuclear scientists and acts of sabotage directed at nuclear facilities..

It is correct to point out that Biden would encounter political difficulties in providing a meaningful guaranty to Iran that a future president of the United States would not again withdraw as Trump would almost certainly do should he be reelected in 2024. Biden is also under pressure from Israel and from domestic politics with an mid-term election scheduled for November 2022, not to rejoin the JCPOA, at least not without additional constraints on Iran relating to non-nuclear armaments and regional political activity and a green light to Israel’s unilateral efforts to violate Iran’s sovereignty for purposes associated with alleged security concerns..

If fairness were to prevail, the. U.S. would repudiate Israeli efforts to shape U.S. foreign policy and rejoin JCPOA without any new preconditions, and accompanied by certain conciliatory acts that were in effect an apologetic acknowledgement of the harm endured by Iran and its people due to the wrongful withdrawal in 2018.

2. In recent weeks, the European Union has presented a final proposal package to Iran and the United States to revive the agreement. Iran quickly responded to the package of the European Union. Citing sources in Europe who had access to the text, some media have called Iran’s text “constructive”. However, the United States has so far refused to respond to the package proposed by Europe and maintains that it is still examining the package and Iran’s response to it. Does the fact that Iran’s speed in responding and its content which has been called “constructive” by European sources, have been faced by the delay of USA, imply Democrats’ unwillingness to revive JCPOA? The conjecture is intensified having in mind the notion that the mid-term elections of the Congress are near and returning to Iran nuclear deal can have negative results for the Democrats.

Response: I would suspect that the major explanation for the delay on the U.S, side is its search for a formula that will lessen Israeli and domestic public criticism for moving toward an acceptance of this latest proposal package table by the EU. Unlike the U.S., Iran does not need to consult with other governmental or political entities before fashioning its response. The European sources asserting that Iran’s proposals are ‘constructive’ undoubtedly is intended to influence Washington to respond in a similar favorable manner to that of Iran, and hence close to consummating a new deal.

This outlook reflects overwhelming sentiments that JCPOA is a positive framework for tension reduction and war avoidance in the Middle East that deserves widespread support to overcome these unfortunate pockets of continuing opposition to any agreement with Iran, and persisting demands to renew and even intensify the coercive approach to Iran by way of sanctions that lasted almost 25 years. Israel has attacked the proposed renewal of JCPOA on three unconvincing grounds: first,, that it will not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry, posing severe threats to the security of countries in the region; that sanctions relief will provide the Iranian government with $100 billion per year to fund ‘terrorist’ organizations’ (specifically, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jirhad); and by agreeing to such an arrangement the U.S. signals a lack of resolve to oppose Iranian expansionism .

3. Iran is strongly seeking to receive a guarantee from the United States that Washington will not withdraw from the nuclear agreement. However, the United States ignores Iran’s request on the pretext that it is not able to make such a promise based on the structures of the United States. Although Washington’s argument may seem correct at first glance, in any case, countries have international and bilateral obligations that all their administrations must respect.

On the other hand, as the Iranian authorities have announced, it seems that they want to increase the moral cost of the USA withdrawal, because in practice, if Washington or even another country wants to withdraw from the agreement, it is impossible to force it to stay. Having in mind the fact that the provision of such assurances only increases the moral constraints of the agreement and may not have any practical value, why is Washington resisting their provision? Does Washington want another unjustified exit?

Response: My assessment is that as weak an American president as Biden will be very reluctant to generate critical reactions contending that he is giving assurances to a hostile foreign government that exceed his constitutional authority, based on the doctrine separation of legislative and executive authority that is invoked as an integral part of the foundation of legitimate governance in the U.S. The normal path to a long-range irreversible national commitments takes the form of an international treaty requiring ratification by 2/3s of the U.S. Senate. This would not be unobtainable in relation to the JCPOA. given Israel’s and Republican right-wing’s opposition to concluding any agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. In any event, to follow treaty ratification procedures would require years of effort even if the political atmosphere made ratification a practical option.

It is also probably useful for Biden to have the freedom to assure Israel and critics of a diplomatic approach coupled with an assurance that if Iran behaves in a manner that is regarded as unacceptable, then a second withdrawal is an option that has not been foreclosed, even morally. The issue is on both sides one of appearances, For Iran the appearance that JCPOA is this time a durable arrangement not subject to changes in political leadership in signatory countries. For the U.S. the appearance of flexibility are assurances to opponents and critics that JCPOA does not constrain American leaders from once more withdrawing and opting once more for a totally coercive approach to relations with Iran.

As matters now stand, the U.S. has virtually admitted that it needs time to consult with the E3 countries (France, UK, Germany), and most of all Israel to make sure that the terms agreed upon for the renewal of the JCPOA take maximum account of their national security interests. Whether the text subject to these consultations ends up in a deal probably depends on whether Washington is willing to ignore opposition by Israel and to moderate criticism by promising a strong U.S. future military and diplomatic engagement in securing the region. If an agreement does result it may also include an expressed willingness to refrain from Israeli unilateral moves against Iran even uses of aggressive force in total disregard of international law and the UN Charter.

Tags: , , , , ,

Movements to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and to Establish Geopolitical Accountability

16 Aug

If concerned with these issues go to the links given here connecting you with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the NGO that has the longest record of commitment to the movement to establish a global security system without nuclear weapons and with geopolitical accountability: https://www.wagingpeace.org/two-new-essays-by-richard-falk-napfs-senior-vice-president/

Two Perspectives on the 10th NPT Review Conference

And here:

Connecting the Dots 77 Years Later: Hiroshima and Nuremberg

Connecting the Dots 77 Years Later: Hiroshima and Nuremberg

14 Aug

[Prefatory Note: ‘Can ‘Victors’ Justice be Just?’ was the rhetorical question I asked myself as I first read the Nuremberg Judgment as a law student in the 1950s, and even more so as a young law teacher I stumbled across the later Tokyo Judgment a few years later, which contained the famous (in Japan) long dissent of the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal. The back story intrigued me explaining why those who constructed the Japanese war crimes tribunal at least made the panel of judges appear less like a victors’ show trial than what took place in Germany, and yet outside of Japan evoked less interest because of Justice Pal’s heresy, fidelity to the integrity of the rule of law in the aftermath of a major war.]  

At first glance, it may seem perverse to link Hiroshima and Nuremberg, not as flowing from opposite impulses dominant among the victors in World War II, but as emerging from the same amoral cast of political sensibility. Yet after the passage of 77 years, it seems more relevant to insist that dropping atomic bombs on cities filled with ordinary people coupled with the moral hubris involved in granting impunity to such acts on the very days that these weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction were exploded offers insight into the way in which the weaponry has been almost ‘normalized’ for the winners and a few others ever since.

Would we be prudently trembling now if in 1945 the winners had displayed at least moral sensitivity to the irony of prosecuting the losers on the very days during which the winners perpetrated the worst and most consequential international crime of the entire war?

“If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” so said Robert H. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor at Nuremberg. Such noble words have had no echo in the corridors of power, wearily recited for decades by those of us committed to the emergence of a world in which these weapons have been forever abolished. As it is, we have every reason to believe that those with the authority would repeat the double move of exempting themselves from accountability while self-righteously punishing those experiencing the unleashed fury of nuclearism. The marked differences between 1945 and 202? being the planetary magnitude of the harm done by the use of such weapons and the probable post-war inability to identify ‘a winner.’ The question left open is whether the losers in such a struggle would go on fighting to win the most pyric victory ever or might at last, even if too late, seek the survival of the human species treated as a collective unity. I describe below my own belated reckoning with this disturbing, unacknowledged linkage.

It was only recently that I realized that the 1945 signing of the London Agreement by the U.S., Soviet Union, France, and the UK arranging the  establishment of a tribunal in Nuremberg charged with prosecuting  major Nazi war criminals occurred on August 8, 1945, that is, wedged in between the days when the atomic bombs were dropped. A parallel tribunal in Tokyo was set up to try Japanese war crimes some months later. It has been often observed by independent commentators, especially in recent years, that these initiatives were so one-sided as to stretch the meaning of criminal law beyond recognition. The most telling sign of a legitimate legal process is the equal treatment of equals. Yet inequality pervaded the structure, procedures, and outcomes of these self-righteous tribunals, from the selection of the judges to impunity for those guilty of war crimes on the winning side. Despite such fundamental inequalities there are few who would doubt that the evidence presented at Nuremberg and Tokyo clearly documented despicable forms of criminality were carefully shown to be work of the indicted Germans and Japanese defendants. What became somewhat controversial about the trials at the time was the failure to inquire into the violations of international criminal law by the winning side, which is why these tribunals, however conscientious their work, have been derided over the years as glaring instances of ‘victors’ justice.’

My interest in the connections between Hiroshima and Nuremberg is somewhat different than mounting another critique. I find the insensitivity of such a high profile signing of this agreement on August 8th establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal is appalling. It occurred during the very days of the atomic bombings, arguably the worst crime of World War II at least on a par with the Holocaust. It is more than insensitivity, it is moral numbness of such depth as to prepare political actors, whether states, empire, leaders, or simply ‘realists’ to embrace past crimes and commit future crimes. It best explains such features of evolving world order as a geopolitical right of exception at the UN by way of the veto and impunity with respect to accountability procedures. In effect, the UN is designed quite literally to give assurances that the most dangerous states, as of 1945, are jurisprudentially protected forever from any adverse Security Council decision as to criminal acts, at least within the UN System.

What is this slightly disguised feature of legality and legitimacy conveying to a curious observer? That law and accountability are relevant for propaganda and punishment against Great Power adversaries, that the wrongs of victors in major wars are beyond scrutiny while the same level of wrongdoing by the losers will be punished harshly. In effect, the vanquished and weak are to be judged in what amounts to ‘show trials’ because of the core failure to treat equals equally, purging geopolitics from the annals of international criminal justice.

There is yet something else to reflect upon. If August 8th had been a different day of infamy because an English or American city had been targeted by a German atomic bomb and yet Germany still lost the war, the act and the weapon would have been criminalized at Nuremberg and by subsequent international actions. We might not be still living under the storm clouds cast by this weaponry if the perpetrators of those dreadful events of August 6th and 9th had been the losers in World War II, which makes the rightly celebrated defeat of fascism on balance a somewhat questionable long-term victory for humanity.

77 years later it seems worth pondering the costs of continuing to allow this long repressed relationship between Hiroshima and Nuremberg to color our understanding of good and evil in global settings. The recent irresponsible heightening of geopolitical tensions with Russia and China should alert us to the relevance of this still unacknowledged legacy of how the end of World War II was manipulated to assure that the most powerful states would go on preparing for ever more destructive wars

until the end of time, or more likely, the end of the human species.

Tags: , , , , ,

[Prefatory Note: Every year since 1945 some account is taken of the legacies of the atomic attacks between August 6-9.. This year this legacy takes two quite different forms at the NPT Review Conference; First, the nuclear weapons states are confronted by their failure to comply with the Article Vi disarmament commitment in the form of a treaty initiative from the Global South that calls for the comprehensive prohibition of the weaponry. The second development is the geopolitical crisis brought to the surface of world politics by the Ukraine War. In both instances the situation inworld has come to a new phase Two Images of the 2 NPT Review Conference77 Years After Hiroshima and NagasakiPeace activists around the world often choose August 6th and 9th each year to grieve anew the human suffering and devastation caused by dropping atomic bombs on the virtually undefended Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which possessed scant military significance. Among other things these atomic attacks were ‘geopolitical crimes’ of ultimate terror, with flimsy combat justifications, seemingly mainly intended mainly as a warning to Soviet leaders not to defy the West in the Pacific dimensions of the peace diplomacy at the end of World War II. This mega-terror event was also justified, especially at the time, as ‘saving American lives’ that were presumed to be lost in the event that the U.S. had to bring the war to an end by invading the Japanese homeland. Historians still disagree about whether Japan would have surrendered if a diplomatic approach to ending the war had been attempted, but the fact that it wasn’t is itself an indictment of the atomic bomb attacks.These August dates marking the utter destruction of these two Japanese cities and the large residue of suffering that lasted for decades are treated by the world as events giving rise to what has become widely known as the nuclear age, perhaps by now superseded by what is called the digital age. This awful beginning of the nuclear age can, however, never be forgotten or redeemed, although ever since the explosions in 1945 the solemnity of these memorial occasions has been overshadowed outside of Japan by widespread fears that a nuclear war might occur at some point and a quiet rage continues to build around the world that the nuclear weapons states, above all the U.S., have stubbornly refused to take steps to fulfill pledges to choose a reliable path to nuclear disarmament in good faith.This pledge was initially a matter of prudent politics and elementary morality. The pledge became legally obligatory in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1970), a clearly depicted disarmament commitment affirmed unanimously in an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1996. It has become clear that for the security establishments of the ‘NATO Three’ (U.S. France, UK) disarmament was never more than ‘a useful fiction’ that conveyed the sense that the non-nuclear states were being given a fair exchange commensurate with their willingness to give up their conditional option to underpin at sone point national security by acquiring nuclear weapons (as Russia and China, as well as Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have done over the decades for a variety of reasons in distinct security settings). The non-nuclear Parties to the NPT are not formally obliged to give up their option of acquiring nuclear weapons unconditionally.  Article 10 of the treaty confers on all Parties a right of withdrawal if “extraordinary events..have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” In practice, as Iran is finding out, this right of withdrawal gives way to the geopolitical priorities of an enforcement regime presided over by the United States, and it appears that the geopolitics of containing Iran takes precedence over its treaty right of withdrawal. The so-called The Jerusalem U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership  Joint Declaration signed in July by U.S. and Israel leaders commits the U.S. to using whatever military force is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry. A completely unlawful undertaking that amounts to a threat to use non-defensive force, a violation of Article 51 of the UN Charter.NPT Review Conference at the UNCurrently the NPT Review Conference held every fifth year, this time postponed since 2020 because of COVID, is taking place at UN Headquarters in New York City. Two significant contradictory developments have dominated the scene. It was the first such meeting of NPT Parties since the Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) came into force in early 2021. This treaty, largely a project of governments from the Global South in active coalition with Global Civil Society has drawn a bright line between the majority views of the peoples of the world and the security elites of these nine nuclear weapons states.Indeed, the NATO Three had the temerity to issue a joint statement expressing their total opposition to the approach taken by the so-called Ban Treaty (TPNW), declared it was their intention to continue to rely on nuclear weapons to meet their far-flung security needs broadly specified to include geopolitical deterrence, that is, not only is this weaponry not being limited to the defense of homelands but is extende vital strategic concerns that could potentially arise anywhere on the planet. At present, this commitment to nuclearism is illustrated by the U.S. posture in response to the Ukraine War and the future of the One China approach that has prevailed since China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations. These countries steadfastly oppose even a No First Use framework of restraint that would in theory prevent any reliance on threats or uses of nuclear weaponry. This impasse between the nuclear haves and have-nots amounts to an existential confirmation of ‘nuclear apartheid’ as the precarious and self-serving underpinning of global security unless and until the advocates of the TPNW approach muster enough strength and political energy to mount a real challenge to such a hegemonic and menacing concentration of unaccountable power and discretionary authority.New Patterns of Geopolitical Rivalry Increase Risks of Nuclear WarThe second notable development at the NPT Review Conference lent a sense of immediacy and urgency to what had become 77 years after Hiroshima a somewhat abstract concern is the Ukraine War. The geopolitical spillover effect of heightening the perceived risks of the use of nuclear weaponry generated the most widely felt fear of nuclear war of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The U.S. decided it was worth the risks to challenge Russia’s attack on Ukraine sufficiently to preserve its strategic mastery of global security since the end of the Cold War incorporating the view that the world is better off if political space exists for only one extraterritorial state. Such a Global State would became the sole custodian of global governance when it comes to the international security agenda. Among other things, this unipolarity meant that Cold War Era mutual respect for territorial spheres of influence on the borders of Great Powers no longer served as pillars of stable geopolitical coexistence. After the Soviet collapse in 1992 the U.S. has acted as if were entitled and empowered to implement a Monroe Doctrine for the world. To make such a grandiose hegemonic political destiny credible the U.S. has willingly shouldered the immense economic and strategic burdens that accompany the role, paying the immense costs and uncertainties of maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases around the world and naval fleets in every ocean. NATO’s insistence early in the Ukraine War on making Russia pay for its invasion by being again reduced to the normalcies of territorial sovereignty was undoubtedly intended to be a master class for the benefit of Russia, and especially China, in the geopolitics of the post-Cold War world. It also provided an occasion to send China, currently the more formidable adversary of the West, a message written with the blood of Ukrainian lives, that any show of force to regain control over Taiwan will be met an even more punitive response, including thinly veiled threats that pointedly refuse to rule out uses of nuclear weapons. Pentagon war games some months ago ominously showed that China would prevail in any military encounter in the South China Seas unless the U.S. was prepared to cross the nuclear threshold. This assessment should confirms the renewed strategic dependence on nuclear weaponry if the U.S. is to continue to insist on managing global security for the world. In the short run, the Taiwan challenge has proven helpful in making the case for even larger military appropriations from Congress.American diplomacy toward China has aggravated an already inflammatory context by some inexplicably provocative behavior in recent months. First came a gratuitous public pronouncement by Biden last May while in Asia to provide whatever military assistance was deemed necessary to protect Taiwan if under attack by China. And secondly, came the provocative and destabilizing August visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi at a time of already high tensions. Such provocations violated the spirit of the Shanghai Communique that was issued by China and the U.S. in 1972. This document the outcome of a diplomatic breakthrough a half century ago has kept a reasonably stable status quo between these major geopolitical adversaries based on what Henry Kissinger praised as ‘strategic ambiguity,’ what others have referred to as the One China Policy. These Biden/Pelosi ploys seem yet another expression of American amateurism when it comes to foreign policy during the Biden presidency, or worse, are deliberate efforts to provoke Xi Jinping to take action justifying an American punitive response. This supposedly nationally ambitious autocrat is already being accused in China of being weak, negatively portrayed in his own country as backing down on the key policy goal of achieving the reunification of China and Taiwan. Despite these provocations by Washington, China has yet to depart from its oft repeated commitment to achieve Chinese reunification by peaceful means.Whether this crisis involving Taiwan reflect incompetence or malice is a matter of judgment. Either is unacceptably imprudent when it comes to nuclear dangers rising again to the surface, the very opposite of the responsible statecraft expected of a Great Power given the risks of the Nuclear Age. .In effect, remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2022 is overshadowed by this dual reality of ongoing ‘geopolitical wars.’ It is also a reminder that nuclear war was narrowly averted in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 by what Martin Sherwin, an authoritative interpreter of nuclear risk called, ‘dumb luck.’ [Gambling with Armageddon (2020); Also relevant Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine (2017)]. It may also be the moment when a nascent peace movement in the Global North wakes up and pushes for adoption of the TPNW approach as if a critical political goal of the Global South.PostBlockmarking to the  end of the post-Cold War period of minimally contested U.S, managed unipolarity.]

13 Aug

Two Images of the 2 NPT Review Conference

77 Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Peace activists around the world often choose August 6th and 9th each year to grieve anew the human suffering and devastation caused by dropping atomic bombs on the virtually undefended Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which possessed scant military significance. Among other things these atomic attacks were ‘geopolitical crimes’ of ultimate terror, with flimsy combat justifications, seemingly mainly intended mainly as a warning to Soviet leaders not to defy the West in the Pacific dimensions of the peace diplomacy at the end of World War II. This mega-terror event was also justified, especially at the time, as ‘saving American lives’ that were presumed to be lost in the event that the U.S. had to bring the war to an end by invading the Japanese homeland. Historians still disagree about whether Japan would have surrendered if a diplomatic approach to ending the war had been attempted, but the fact that it wasn’t is itself an indictment of the atomic bomb attacks.

These August dates marking the utter destruction of these two Japanese cities and the large residue of suffering that lasted for decades are treated by the world as events giving rise to what has become widely known as the nuclear age, perhaps by now superseded by what is called the digital age. This awful beginning of the nuclear age can, however, never be forgotten or redeemed, although ever since the explosions in 1945 the solemnity of these memorial occasions has been overshadowed outside of Japan by widespread fears that a nuclear war might occur at some point and a quiet rage continues to build around the world that the nuclear weapons states, above all the U.S., have stubbornly refused to take steps to fulfill pledges to choose a reliable path to nuclear disarmament in good faith.

This pledge was initially a matter of prudent politics and elementary morality. The pledge became legally obligatory in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1970), a clearly depicted disarmament commitment affirmed unanimously in an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1996. It has become clear that for the security establishments of the ‘NATO Three’ (U.S. France, UK) disarmament was never more than ‘a useful fiction’ that conveyed the sense that the non-nuclear states were being given a fair exchange commensurate with their willingness to give up their conditional option to underpin at sone point national security by acquiring nuclear weapons (as Russia and China, as well as Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have done over the decades for a variety of reasons in distinct security settings). The non-nuclear Parties to the NPT are not formally obliged to give up their option of acquiring nuclear weapons unconditionally.  Article 10 of the treaty confers on all Parties a right of withdrawal if “extraordinary events..have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” In practice, as Iran is finding out, this right of withdrawal gives way to the geopolitical priorities of an enforcement regime presided over by the United States, and it appears that the geopolitics of containing Iran takes precedence over its treaty right of withdrawal. The so-called The Jerusalem U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership  Joint Declaration signed in July by U.S. and Israel leaders commits the U.S. to using whatever military force is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry. A completely unlawful undertaking that amounts to a threat to use non-defensive force, a violation of Article 51 of the UN Charter.

NPT Review Conference at the UN

Currently the NPT Review Conference held every fifth year, this time postponed since 2020 because of COVID, is taking place at UN Headquarters in New York City. Two significant contradictory developments have dominated the scene. It was the first such meeting of NPT Parties since the Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) came into force in early 2021. This treaty, largely a project of governments from the Global South in active coalition with Global Civil Society has drawn a bright line between the majority views of the peoples of the world and the security elites of these nine nuclear weapons states.

Indeed, the NATO Three had the temerity to issue a joint statement expressing their total opposition to the approach taken by the so-called Ban Treaty (TPNW), declared it was their intention to continue to rely on nuclear weapons to meet their far-flung security needs broadly specified to include geopolitical deterrence, that is, not only is this weaponry not being limited to the defense of homelands but is extende vital strategic concerns that could potentially arise anywhere on the planet. At present, this commitment to nuclearism is illustrated by the U.S. posture in response to the Ukraine War and the future of the One China approach that has prevailed since China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations. These countries steadfastly oppose even a No First Use framework of restraint that would in theory prevent any reliance on threats or uses of nuclear weaponry. This impasse between the nuclear haves and have-nots amounts to an existential confirmation of ‘nuclear apartheid’ as the precarious and self-serving underpinning of global security unless and until the advocates of the TPNW approach muster enough strength and political energy to mount a real challenge to such a hegemonic and menacing concentration of unaccountable power and discretionary authority.

New Patterns of Geopolitical Rivalry Increase Risks of Nuclear War

The second notable development at the NPT Review Conference lent a sense of immediacy and urgency to what had become 77 years after Hiroshima a somewhat abstract concern is the Ukraine War. The geopolitical spillover effect of heightening the perceived risks of the use of nuclear weaponry generated the most widely felt fear of nuclear war of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The U.S. decided it was worth the risks to challenge Russia’s attack on Ukraine sufficiently to preserve its strategic mastery of global security since the end of the Cold War incorporating the view that the world is better off if political space exists for only one extraterritorial state. Such a Global State would became the sole custodian of global governance when it comes to the international security agenda. Among other things, this unipolarity meant that Cold War Era mutual respect for territorial spheres of influence on the borders of Great Powers no longer served as pillars of stable geopolitical coexistence. After the Soviet collapse in 1992 the U.S. has acted as if were entitled and empowered to implement a Monroe Doctrine for the world. To make such a grandiose hegemonic political destiny credible the U.S. has willingly shouldered the immense economic and strategic burdens that accompany the role, paying the immense costs and uncertainties of maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases around the world and naval fleets in every ocean. 

NATO’s insistence early in the Ukraine War on making Russia pay for its invasion by being again reduced to the normalcies of territorial sovereignty was undoubtedly intended to be a master class for the benefit of Russia, and especially China, in the geopolitics of the post-Cold War world. It also provided an occasion to send China, currently the more formidable adversary of the West, a message written with the blood of Ukrainian lives, that any show of force to regain control over Taiwan will be met an even more punitive response, including thinly veiled threats that pointedly refuse to rule out uses of nuclear weapons. Pentagon war games some months ago ominously showed that China would prevail in any military encounter in the South China Seas unless the U.S. was prepared to cross the nuclear threshold. This assessment should confirms the renewed strategic dependence on nuclear weaponry if the U.S. is to continue to insist on managing global security for the world. In the short run, the Taiwan challenge has proven helpful in making the case for even larger military appropriations from Congress.

American diplomacy toward China has aggravated an already inflammatory context by some inexplicably provocative behavior in recent months. First came a gratuitous public pronouncement by Biden last May while in Asia to provide whatever military assistance was deemed necessary to protect Taiwan if under attack by China. And secondly, came the provocative and destabilizing August visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi at a time of already high tensions. Such provocations violated the spirit of the Shanghai Communique that was issued by China and the U.S. in 1972. This document the outcome of a diplomatic breakthrough a half century ago has kept a reasonably stable status quo between these major geopolitical adversaries based on what Henry Kissinger praised as ‘strategic ambiguity,’ what others have referred to as the One China Policy. These Biden/Pelosi ploys seem yet another expression of American amateurism when it comes to foreign policy during the Biden presidency, or worse, are deliberate efforts to provoke Xi Jinping to take action justifying an American punitive response. This supposedly nationally ambitious autocrat is already being accused in China of being weak, negatively portrayed in his own country as backing down on the key policy goal of achieving the reunification of China and Taiwan. Despite these provocations by Washington, China has yet to depart from its oft repeated commitment to achieve Chinese reunification by peaceful means.

Whether this crisis involving Taiwan reflect incompetence or malice is a matter of judgment. Either is unacceptably imprudent when it comes to nuclear dangers rising again to the surface, the very opposite of the responsible statecraft expected of a Great Power given the risks of the Nuclear Age. .

In effect, remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2022 is overshadowed by this dual reality of ongoing ‘geopolitical wars.’ It is also a reminder that nuclear war was narrowly averted in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 by what Martin Sherwin, an authoritative interpreter of nuclear risk called, ‘dumb luck.’ [Gambling with Armageddon (2020); Also relevant Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine (2017)]. It may also be the moment when a nascent peace movement in the Global North wakes up and pushes for adoption of the TPNW approach as if a critical political goal of the Global South.

Donation Politics: Worse than Hypocrisy

1 Aug

☰

[PREFATORY NOTE: This post is a modified and revised version of an opinion piece publish under a different title by CounterPunch on July 29, 2022.]

Donation Politics: Biden’s Global Hypocrisy Starts at Home

Photograph Source: Palácio do Planalto – CC BY 2.0

Donation Politics: Worse than Hypocrisy

A few days ago, among the many solicitations for funds to support Democratic candidates around the country in the 2022 elections came one that caught my eye because of its obviously phony seductive line “I’d like to give you a call, Richard.” Reading the next line, none other than the U.S. President apparently with much time to waste, was supposedly eager to learn my views on what government might do better to meet my needs and uphold my values, purporting even to be on a first-name basis with me despite the utter absence of any prior contact. To dumb down the President for the sake of a hypocritical pitch struck me as distasteful, but also eroding of trust, already compromised, between the state and the citizenry upon which the viability of democracy crucially depends.

This manipulative hucksterism became even more personal a day or two later when the same lure line was attributed to Jill Biden, herself cast in the demeaning role of a political party team player. The First Lady went on to expatiate upon the cynical view that Democrats are so desperate for a chance to interact with the President that they would fall for any come on, however absurdly misleading. In her supposedly revealing words that struck me as utterly contrived: “Throughout the years, I’ve learned that there are at least three things that can make Joe smile from ear to ear: Our kids and grandkids, chocolate chip ice cream, and getting to talk one-on-one with Americans like you, Richard.” And she goes on, “Having the chance to hear your hopes and dreams grounds Joe and motivates him to keep fighting the hard battles. That’s why Joe would love nothing more than to give you a call soon.” 

Then come the unsurprising hooker, really what motivated the message and explains its atonality —nothing more or less than a crass appeal for money coupled with a delayed ‘admission’ that, after all, actually receiving a call from Biden was as unlikely as Donald Trump committing civil disobedience as a consequence of becoming an ardent anti-nuclear activist. I didn’t have to read much further for these suspicions to be crudely confirmed. The price of admission to Biden’s specious ‘inner circle’ of solicited political feedback dupes was disclosed. It turned out if I wanted to be among those who were now to be MERELY informed they MIGHT receive such a call, all I had to do was ‘to chip in’ as little as $7 to get on a list from which a fraction were selected to receive a call from the President. The only puzzle left to solve is whether the chosen one were picked at random or because they had donated the most or hailed from swing states. This more plausible interpretation of this offensively personalized  message no longer resembled in feeling and substance what was claimed on Biden’s behalf when he initially reached out to me, which had I been less jaded, I would have interpreted as expressing an unconditional wish by a conscientious leader who was, however foolishly, sincerely interested in learning my views on national policy issues, and was not just another snake oil salesman sending me an email in the form of a hook baited for donations.

Surely, if calls directly from Biden were up for sale, surely they would be priced much higher if indeed swallowing the donation bait was all that was required. Such a  bargain price sent an unmistakable signal that I would wait until at least the age of 90 before I could expect the phone to ring and be thrilled to discover Biden waiting on the other end impatient to begin ourconversation. If the price of admission had been pegged at $10,000 or more, I would have interpreted the appeal as a somewhat imaginative ploy to reach authentic  ‘good Democrats,’ that is, not the thinking kind but the contributing kind. In any event, for those remotely in the know, party politics had long been preoccupied with chasing ‘rich Democrats’ while relying on robocalls and mass digital mailings to gather donations from presumed sympathetic political loners like myself, not knowing or caring that I was almost as alienated by what the Democratic Party establishment had foisted upon the country than by the evil doings of the radical right. In my case some overworked party hack must have misread my political profile if he added me to the DNC rolodex for donor prospects.

When it became clear that this was just a somewhat different, and deceptive, way to plead for small donations, the mysterious prospect of actually receiving the phone call actually took a prominent place in a  zone of extreme improbability. This was a discrediting revelation being conveyed to prospective donkey donors like myself by not so subtly letting us know that only after receiving a donation would we became eligible to receive the phone call, and even then only fools would hold their breath in anticipation. I now understood that my donation would have resulted, at most, to adding me to what I assumed to be a lengthy list. Perhaps during a lull in Biden’s presidential activities, a few contributors would be chosen to fulfill the literal commitment of the solicitation. In effect, you were being asked to buy a million-to-one lottery ticket with a tiny fraction of a chance of being chosen, and even this might be fanciful as I doubt that even Biden would find himself so at loose ends as to risk receiving a harangue from someone like myself. This disarming personalized solicitation was always about money never about soliciting views. Given the dependence of many valuable civil society initiatives on public funding and private trust, the Democratic Party should be ashamed to be giving responsible appeals for support a bad name associated with deception, contempt for the intelligence of grassroots supporters, and an unscrupulous manipulative ethos.

To be honest about my own feelings, I would not have welcomed such a call if by some dark twist of fate I had received it, nor would Mr. Biden have liked what I had to say given this rare opportunity in the spirit of talking truth to power. It would lead me to express my deep forebodings for the future of America as a peace-oriented constitutional democracy reinforced by an extensive social protection available to all of its residents as part of a national commitment to human security. My skepticism about such an affirmative future for the country arises from the lethal passivity of the nominally pro-democracy political forces in the U.S. The anemic response to the growing strength of a pre-fascist violent movement on the extreme right is convincing evidence, activating memories of the fate of Weimar Republic, and the drift toward world war.

Of course, the cynical depths of appealing for political funds on the basis of an entirely contrived intimacy and a false claim of wishing to gain valuable feedback from representative ‘good Democrats’ is more than a cheap shot to empty the pockets of gullible folks many of whom have little cash to spare. This type of ‘donation politics’ offers us an apt metaphor for the overall debasement of electoral politics by shining its Madison Avenue spotlight on the essential source of societal corruption—namely money and profits. What is conveyed to a concerned citizen or permanent resident is that the quest for money even in miniscule amounts is the core reality of what politics has become. As a result it destroys the trust of those who truly wish for a more participatory process joining state and society. This would truly induce a presidential leader to make serious efforts to find effective ways to take account of the views of ordinary citizens, rather than expend their energies on doing the bidding of special interests who have earned the right to unlimited presidential access and responsiveness solely as a result of their sizable donations. For instance, the majority of Americans favor a more balanced approach to relations between Israelis and Palestinians instead of as agenda set by AIPAC, or less military spending and a host of other issues that Biden would certainly rather not hear about from disgruntled citizens. 

If he had the personal misfortune to receive this sort of angry response, rather than fulsome praise about how well he was doing, it would quickly replace Joe’s supposedly big smile with an angry smirk. Whether it is Wall Street or defense contractors, it is no secret that the citizenry wants less inequality and more social protection, but whether public preferences of this sort will be respected in coming years seems ever more in doubt. It is, at best, a perilous time to champion a politics of planetary liberation. Yet without such a politics, the country and the world will continue to experience dysfunctional global governance.  

Writing so shortly after Biden’s clumsily mismanaged mid-July visit to Israel and the Saudi Arabia makes this conjecture of dysfunction more than an abstract fear. Biden’s telling gesture of ingratiating himself to his Israeli hosts by proclaiming himself as a non-Jewish Zionist bonds him with the only prior such public affirmation of which I am aware, that of the white supremist, Richard Spencer [See Tony Greenstein’s extraordinary, scrupulously researched comprehensive critique of Zionism for confirmation: Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of the Holocaust (expected publication, 2022).] I am not intending to imply that Biden is at all sympathetic with white supremacist ideology, but that this pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself by identifying so ardently with legally, morally, politically and spiritually dubious claims to Jewish supremacy in Israel. In context, it was rightly perceived as even more extreme than such an affirmation, given Biden’s silence about Israeli apartheid so authoritatively documented during the last two years and considering the ordeal inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Zionist Project for over a century. 

If this is what being a ‘good Democrat’ in America has come to mean, then the Democratic party may be in worse shape than even I imagined. Of course, Biden would disavow such association with extremism, but his hyped identification with Israeli ethnocracy should be deeply disturbing to every American, regardless of party, who affirms the fundamental aspirational identity of the United States as a multiethnic democracy.  The only future with any hopes of national recovery from the horrors of January 6th and a Supreme Court that foists the regressive views of the voting radical right majority on the American people. There exists enough evidence of Biden’s vanity to be confident that he would have hung up the phone long before I got to my most severe political complaint of all: That by opening more widely the portals of political extremism and geopolitical confrontation Biden is being derelict in his presidential performance at a time of multiple planetary and species crises.

At least Nero made music while Rome burned. I prefer a leader who fiddles to the Biden hucksterism of the soft sell. We need to ask ourselves with a sense of urgency, ‘where is the outrage?’ and ‘why are the streets empty?’ Bob Dylan’s message of the sixties rings truer than ever: ‘The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.”

Tags: , , , ,