Putin’s February speech echoed his earlier speeches. It is part of a narrative he has crafted over the years and the long game he is playing. Putin’s on the Kremlin website dated July 12, 2021 covers much of the same ground. Both reveal the depth of Russian resentment and the strength of Putin’s paranoia.

In February, the Russian president yet again complained about “NATO’s expansion to our borders” and hundreds of American military bases around the world. He accused the US-led West of seeking “unlimited power,” and, as per American experts, killing “almost 900,000 people” and creating 38 million refugees since 2001.

Putin claimed that Western elites have embarked on an “anti-Russia project” and have “already spent over $150 billion on helping and arming the Kiev regime.” In contrast, the G7 countries have “earmarked about $60 billion in 2020–2021 to help the world’s poorest countries.” The Russian strongman accused the West of being warmongering, hypocritical and hegemonic. According to Putin, Western elites care about domination, not poverty alleviation, sustainable development or environmental protection. He claimed that the “West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and as a testing range” because Moscow is too proud to kowtow to Washington.

Ominously, Putin announced in his speech that “Russia [was] suspending its membership in the New START Treaty” that aims at reducing nuclear warheads and the missiles and bombers capable of delivering them.

What is the New START Treaty?

The US State Department us that the New START Treaty is the “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.” It came “into force on February 5, 2011,” and both parties had “agreed to extend the treaty through February 4, 2026.”

This treaty placed “verifiable limits on all Russian deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons.” The New START Treaty also set limits for nuclear weapons, which are as follows:

• 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments;
• 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (each such heavy bomber is counted as one warhead toward this limit);
• 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

It is important to note that START negotiations in 1982 and continued for decades. The START I Treaty was signed by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev on July 31, 1991. The Soviet Union collapsed by the end of that year but START I survived. Russia under Boris Yeltsin continued to adhere to it. When Dmitry Medvedev was president, Russia signed the New START Treaty that has persisted since.

To be clear, Russia has not withdrawn from the New START Treaty. In Putin’s words, Russia is “suspending [its] participation.” He has put a precondition to returning to “discussing this issue” — the nuclear arsenals of NATO powers, France and the UK are now on the table. Simply put, this treaty is on hold: Russia could reinstate it speedily unlike the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which stands abandoned and would have to be renegotiated. Even suspension of the New START is dangerous and has upped the ante in what the US Army War College first called a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous () world.

Putin claims that the times have changed radically since 1991 when Bush Senior and Gorbachev signed the first START agreement. He referred to George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty as proof of American perfidy. In return for Russian support for the US after the 9/11 attacks, Moscow got stabbed in the back by Washington. The Russian president is not alone in remembering this US decision. In December 2021, James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called Bush Junior’s decision to from the ABM Treaty “an epic mistake.” Other analysts, especially from the so-called Global South, remember this withdrawal vividly. Acton rightly argued that Bush Junior’s unilateral action “fueled a new arms race.” Putin’s decision might have just poured oil and blown gas on that race.

Why Putin’s decision matters

In the Cold War, many people around the world feared a nuclear war. A key by the Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that there have been a number of “close calls with nuclear weapons.” In the 1950s and 1960s, both the US and the Soviet Union kept bombers armed with nuclear weapons on “airborne alert.” To mitigate risks of an accidental nuclear war, the Soviet Union and the US Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s. Eventually, they led to START and the New START Treaty.

In recent years, geopolitical temperatures have been rising. The Russia-Ukraine War has not only brought back large-scale conflict to Europe after World War II but also heightened the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone assumes that nuclear war is far too destructive and no one could reasonably countenance it. Yet the fact sheet tells us that we came close to war on numerous occasions.

Three examples are noteworthy. On October 5, 1960, the US early warning system at Thule, Greenland detected that dozens of Soviet missiles had been launched against the US. Luckily, Nikita Kruschev was visiting New York at that time. So, Americans decided that must have been a false alarm. Indeed, it was. It turns out that “the radar had been fooled by moonrise over Norway.” Another false alarm “happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis” on October 28, 1962. 

A third false alarm occurred on September 26, 1983 when an early warning satellite detected that five US missiles had been launched at the Soviet Union. This was a time of high US-Soviet tensions. Earlier in the month, the Soviets had shot down a Korean Airlines plane that had strayed into their airspace, killing almost 300 people. The officer on duty believed this was a false alarm and took the bold decision of not following the set procedures, averting nuclear war. We now know that the satellite had been fooled by the sun’s reflection on the top of the clouds. With heightened tensions today, no officer on duty, American or Russia, would dare to overrule any warning system. Human errors, technical problems and procedural mistakes have occurred in the past. There is no reason to assume that these could not happen again. The end of the New START Treaty has ratcheted up tensions in our VUCA world. Putin does not really have to press the nuclear button or use tactical nuclear weapons for matters to get out of hand. Any false alarm could set off an accidental nuclear war.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The US and NATO have used similar forms of force and coercion against many countries. In every case they have been catastrophic for the people directly impacted, whether they achieved their political aims or not. 

The Bitter Fruits of US Intervention

Wars and violent regime changes in Kosovo, Iraq, Haiti and Libya have left them mired in endless corruption, poverty and chaos. Failed proxy wars in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have spawned endless war and humanitarian disasters. US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have impoverished their people but failed to change their governments. 

Meanwhile, US-backed coups in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras have sooner or later been reversed by grassroots movements to restore democratic, socialist government. The Taliban are governing Afghanistan again after a 20-year war to expel a US and NATO army of occupation, for which the sore losers are now millions of Afghans.     

But the risks and consequences of the US Cold War on Russia are of a different order. The purpose of any war is to defeat your enemy. But how can you defeat an enemy that is explicitly committed to respond to the prospect of existential defeat by destroying the whole world?

Mutually Assured Destruction

This is in fact part of the military doctrine of the US and Russia, who together possess of the world’s nuclear weapons. If either of them faces existential defeat, they are prepared to destroy human civilization in a nuclear holocaust that will kill Americans, Russians and neutrals alike.           

In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a stating, “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

US nuclear weapons policy is no more reassuring. A decades-long for a US “no first use” nuclear weapons policy still falls on deaf ears in Washington.

The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that the US would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. But in a war with another nuclear-armed country, it said, “The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” 

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The 2018 NPR broadened the definition of “extreme circumstances” to cover “significant non-nuclear attacks,” which it said would “include, but are not limited to, attacks on the US, allies or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on US or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment.” The critical phrase, “but are not limited to,” removes any restriction at all on a US nuclear first strike.     

So, as the US Cold War against Russia and China heats up, the only signal that the deliberately foggy threshold for the US use of nuclear weapons has been crossed could be the first mushroom clouds exploding over Russia or China. 

For our part in the West, Russia has explicitly warned us that it will use nuclear weapons if it believes the US or NATO are threatening the existence of the Russian state. That is a threshold that the US and NATO are already with as they look for ways to increase their pressure on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

To make matters worse, the imbalance between US and Russian military spending has the effect, whether either side intends it or not, of increasing Russia’s reliance on the role of its nuclear arsenal when the chips are down in a crisis like this.

NATO countries, led by the United States and UK, are already supplying Ukraine with up to of weapons per day, training Ukrainian forces to use them and providing valuable and deadly to Ukrainian military commanders. Hawkish voices in NATO countries are pushing hard for a no-fly zone or some other way to escalate the war and take advantage of Russia’s perceived weaknesses.

Nuclear Risks Escalate 

The danger that hawks in the State Department and Congress may convince President Joe Biden to escalate the US role in the war prompted the Pentagon to details of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) assessments of Russia’s conduct of the war to Newsweek’s William Arkin.

Senior DIA officers told Arkin that Russia has dropped fewer bombs and missiles on Ukraine in a month than US forces dropped on Iraq in the first day of bombing in 2003, and that they see no evidence of Russia directly targeting civilians. Like US “precision” weapons, Russian weapons are probably only about, so hundreds of stray bombs and missiles are killing and wounding civilians and hitting civilian infrastructure, as they do just as horrifically in every US war. 

The DIA analysts believe Russia is holding back from a more devastating war because what it really wants is not to destroy Ukrainian cities but to negotiate a diplomatic agreement to ensure a neutral, non-aligned Ukraine. 

But the Pentagon appears to be so worried by the impact of highly effective Western and Ukrainian war propaganda that it has released secret intelligence to Newsweek to try to restore a measure of reality to the media’s portrayal of the war, before political pressure for NATO escalation leads to a nuclear war.

Since the US and the USSR blundered into their nuclear suicide pact in the 1950s, it has come to be known as Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. As the Cold War evolved, they cooperated to reduce the risk of mutual assured destruction through arms control treaties, a hotline between Moscow and Washington, and regular contacts between US and Soviet officials. 

But the US has now withdrawn from many of those arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms. The risk of nuclear war is as great today as it has ever been, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns year after year in its annual statement. The Bulletin has also publisheddetailed of how specific technological advances in US nuclear weapons design and strategy are increasing the risk of nuclear war. 

Peace Dividend Lost

The world understandably breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Cold War appeared to end in the early 1990s. But within a decade, the peace dividend the world hoped for was trumped by a. US officials did not use their unipolar moment to build a more peaceful world, but to capitalize on the lack of a military peer competitor to launch an era of US and NATO military expansion and serial aggression against militarily weaker countries and their people.

As Michael Mandelbaum, the director of East-West Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in 1990, “For the first time in 40 years, we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III.” Thirty years later, people in that part of the world may be forgiven for thinking that the US and its allies have in fact unleashed World War III, against them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Gaza, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across West Africa.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin bitterly to President Clinton over plans for NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, but Russia was powerless to prevent it. Russia had already been invaded by an army of Western economic advisers, whose “shock therapy” shrank its GDP by , reduced male life expectancyfrom , and empowered a new class of oligarchs to loot its national resources and state-owned enterprises.

President Vladimir Putin restored the power of the Russian state and improved the Russian people’s living standards, but he did not at first push back against US and NATO military expansion and war-making. However, when NATO and its Arab overthrew the Gaddafi government in Libya and then launched an even bloodier against Russia’s ally Syria, Russia intervened militarily to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government. 

Russia d with the US to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped to open negotiations with Iran that eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But the US role in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s subsequent reintegration of Crimea and its support for anti-coup separatists in Donbass put paid to further cooperation between Obama and Putin, plunging US-Russian relations into a downward spiral that has now led us to the of nuclear war.

The Cold War Is Back  

It is the epitome of official insanity that US, NATO and Russian leaders have resurrected this Cold War, which the whole world celebrated the end of, allowing plans for mass suicide and human extinction to once again masquerade as responsible defense policy. 

While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine and for all the death and destruction of this war, this crisis did not come out of nowhere. The US and its allies must reexamine their own roles in resurrecting the Cold War that spawned this crisis, if we are ever to return to a safer world for people everywhere.

Tragically, instead of expiring on its sell-by date in the 1990s along with the Warsaw Pact, NATO has transformed itself into an aggressive global military alliance, a fig-leaf for US imperialism, and a for dangerous, self-fulfilling threat analysis, to justify its continued existence, endless expansion and crimes of aggression on three continents, in, and. 

If this insanity indeed drives us to mass extinction, it will be no consolation to the scattered and dying survivors that their leaders succeeded in destroying their enemies’ country too. They will simply curse leaders on all sides for their blindness and stupidity. The propaganda by which each side demonized the other will be only a cruel irony once its end result is seen to be the destruction of everything leaders on all sides claimed to be defending.

This reality is common to all sides in this resurgent Cold War. But, like the voices of peace activists in Russia today, our voices are more powerful when we hold our own leaders accountable and work to change our own country’s behavior. 

If Americans just echo US propaganda, deny our own country’s role in provoking this crisis and turn all our ire towards President Putin and Russia, it will only serve to fuel the escalating tensions and bring on the next phase of this conflict, whatever dangerous new form that may take. 

But if we campaign to change our country’s policies, de-escalate conflicts and find common ground with our neighbors in Ukraine, Russia, China and the rest of the world, we can cooperate and solve our serious common challenges together. 

A top priority must be to dismantle the nuclear doomsday machine we have inadvertently collaborated to build and maintain for 70 years, along with the obsolete and dangerous NATO military alliance. We cannot let the “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power” of the keep leading us into ever more dangerous military crises until one of them spins out of control and destroys us all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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These sanctions have contributed to isolating North Korea from the rest of the world. The country has not entirely welcomed this isolation. Despite longstanding suspicions of outside influences, Pyongyang has shown considerable interest in engaging with the West and with the global economy more generally. Economic sanctions have severely limited this interaction.

It’s Time to Act, Not React, on North Korea

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There is currently little political support in the United States for lifting sanctions against North Korea. Despite claims to the contrary, the Biden administration has settled into the same de facto policy of “strategic patience” adopted by the Obama administration. The new administration has not even reversed the Trump administration’s redesignation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In general, the US views economic sanctions as a tool of leverage to bring North Korea back to the negotiations table around its nuclear weapons program. The experience with Iran, for instance, suggests that if the pain of economic sanctions proves sufficiently high, a country will be more willing to restrict its nuclear program. Sanctions can then be reduced in a phased manner as part of a nuclear deal like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

But economic sanctions haven’t played that role with North Korea. They didn’t deter Pyongyang from pursuing a nuclear weapons program, nor have they been subsequently responsible for pushing it toward denuclearization. Unlike Iran, North Korea has been under sanctions for nearly its entire existence and it doesn’t have a strong international economic presence that can be penalized. It has been willing to suffer the effects of isolation in order to build what it considers to be a credible deterrence against foreign attack.

US sanctions policy has demonstrably failed. Is a more credible policy possible or likely?

The Range of Sanctions

There is some  over whether North Korea is the most sanctioned country in the world or only the fifth on the list. This debate, stimulated by a report by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has revolved around a single point. If North Korea isn’t the most sanctioned country in the world, then there is room to apply even sanctions against it.

Even if the US and North Korea have practically no interaction — no diplomatic relations, no commerce, few informal ties — some political actors in Washington would still like to pile on additional sanctions against Pyongyang. It’s unclear what purpose these additional sanctions would serve: purely punitive, one more stick to push Pyongyang back to negotiations, or an effort to precipitate some form of regime change.

Before addressing the utility of the current sanctions regime, let’s take a look at the  categories of prohibitions that the US and the United Nations have adopted against North Korea. In addition, South Korea, Japan, Australia and the European Union have imposed their own sanctions against the country.

Economic sanctions against North Korea cover trade, finance, investment and even North Korean workers in foreign countries. The earliest of these were imposed by the United States after the Korean War of 1950-53, when Washington imposed a total trade embargo on North Korea and also froze all North Korean holdings in the United States. In the 1970s, the US tightened these restrictions by prohibiting the import of any agricultural products that contained raw material from North Korea. The United States also prohibits any exports to North Korea if they contain more than 10% of US-sourced inputs. There are some minor humanitarian exemptions to these sanctions.

Between 2004 and 2019, in the wake of the failed Agreed Framework of the Bill Clinton era, Congress passed eight bills that further restricted economic and financial interactions with North Korea. On the financial side, the US has effectively blocked North Korea from participating in the American financial system but more importantly from engaging in any dollar-based transactions. Secondary sanctions target any countries that conduct business with North Korea, which further limits the country’s access to the global economy.

Because North Korea remains on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, it does not enjoy sovereign immunity from prosecution for certain acts such as torture and extrajudicial killing. The United States is further obligated by the stipulations of this regulation to oppose any effort by North Korea to join the IMF or World Bank.

A rather lengthy  of individuals and entities have been singled out for sanctions, from high-level officials and directors of banks to trading and shipping companies to specific vessels and even non-Korean business people.

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The United States is not alone in imposing sanctions against North Korea. The UN Security Council has passed about a dozen unanimous resolutions that ban trade in arms, luxury goods, electrical equipment, natural gas and other items. Other sanctions impose a  on the assets of designated individuals and entities, prohibit joint ventures with these prohibited entities and restrict cargo trade with North Korea.

Japan has also imposed sanctions, largely as a result of North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests. “These measures freeze certain North Korean and Chinese assets, ban bilateral trade with North Korea, restrict the entry of North Korean citizens and ships into Japanese territory, and prohibit remittances worth more than $880,”  Eleanor Albert.

South Korea, Australia and the EU also maintain their own sanctions against the country.

The Problems With Sanctions

Regardless of whether North Korea is in fact the most heavily sanctioned country in the world or whether there is room to levy even more sanctions against Pyongyang, the obvious conclusion is that sanctions have not worked to change the country’s behavior. If anything, sanctions have achieved the opposite effect.

In the face of a hostile international community, North Korea became ever more convinced of the necessity of building a nuclear weapons program. Once it acquired those weapons, it has decided that they represent the single most important deterrent against foreign intervention. On the economic front, North Korea has forgone the benefits of formal participation in the global economy and has developed various strategies to raise capital through black-market and grey-market activities.

North Korea also routinely evades sanctions. On the energy front alone, according to Arms Control Today’s  of a UN assessment, “In the first nine months of 2020, North Korea ‘exceeded by several times’ the annual 500,000-barrel cap on sanctioned imports by receiving at least 121 shipments of refined petroleum products. The panel also found that North Korea exported 2.5 million tons of coal during the same months via at least 400 shipments through Chinese territorial waters.”

The dream of a “perfect sanctions regime” that chokes off all economic interactions with North Korea is illusory as long as there are actors willing to engage the country. China, because it does not want a collapsing nuclear power on its borders, is willing to keep its fraternal ally on life support. Despite this design flaw, sanctions advocates are always coming up with a better mousetrap. They offer “smart sanctions” and “targeted sanctions” to direct punitive measures at those in power. They propose new enforcement mechanisms, like the Proliferation Security Initiative, to ensure more effective implementation of sanctions. These are often very sophisticated initiatives. But still, the mouse avoids the mousetrap.

The expectation that North Korea will eventually surrender its nuclear program or experience some form of regime change also flies in the face of the evidence of 70 years of experience. If North Korea has defied these expectations for seven decades, why should we expect that capitulation is right around the corner?

Not only have sanctions failed to achieve their intended effect — a non-nuclear North Korea, a more law-abiding regime — they have produced the opposite. In addition to acquiring nuclear weapons, North Korea has been forced to rely on obviously illegal means to generate funds — smuggling, counterfeiting, traffic in illegal products. It has further concentrated power in the military. It has been further cut off from international contacts that could potentially expose the country to other ideas and practices. The result has been a much more isolated, parochial, defensive, militaristic country.

Sanctions, in other words, have produced a vicious circle. The tighter the sanctions, the more North Korea becomes a country that requires sanctioning.

The current US approach is transactional. If North Korea promises in negotiations to behave a certain way and then follows through on its promises, the US will reduce sanctions. On several occasions, this approach has produced certain results. The US lifted certain sanctions as part of the Agreed Framework in the 1990s, then as part of the six-party talks in the 2000s. But any progress along these lines was eventually reversed.

It’s not that the logic of this transactional approach is flawed. Rather, there is a deep divide between the United States and North Korea that renders such an approach problematic.

First, there is a profound asymmetry. US sanctions policy is directed by a number of different actors — the president, Congress, the Treasury Department. And some of these sanctions follow from or otherwise contribute to international sanctions, requiring different authority for their suspension.

But North Korea is extremely hierarchical. The leader has unilateral authority to direct policy, even overruling the military if necessary (as was the case, for instance, in the promotion of the Kaesong Industrial Complex over military objections that the territory was strategic in nature and should not be given over to an inter-Korean economic project). The United States must abide by the legal requirements embedded in sanctions policy and legislation; the North Korean leader can, with a simple edict, create the law.

Second, there is a gap of trust between the two countries. Both sides have made promises that the other side argues have not been upheld. This makes any future promises that much more difficult to be believed. North Koreans generally don’t appreciate the disputes that arise between the executive and legislative branches in the United States — as they did over the implementation of the Agreed Framework provisions in the 1990s — and view the breach to be a result of bad faith rather than politics.

Third, there are certain assumptions in the transactional approach that are not shared. Essentially, the US views North Korea as a mule that can be pushed one way or another through a policy of “carrots and sticks.” Sanctions are a big stick; removal of sanctions is a big carrot.

But North Korea views itself as an autonomous, independent actor. Self-determination is one of the most important elements of the country’s ruling philosophy. It does not look kindly upon foreign entities that treat it as an unreasonable animal that must be pushed and pulled. The transactional nature of the negotiations around the country’s nuclear program fails to take into account this fiercely independent approach.

Beyond Sanctions

It is not easy to do away with US sanctions against North Korea. As Jessica Lee points out in an for The Diplomat, “none of the economic sanctions against North Korea have a sunset clause, so they are difficult to amend or remove.” Presidential waivers are possible, but presidents are generally reluctant to invoke such waivers because of congressional pushback and the generally negative perception of North Korea in US public discourse.

The most immediate task is to consider a range of exemptions to the current sanctions to ensure that the international community can help avert a humanitarian disaster in North Korea. Even the UN special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana, has  for such a relaxation of the sanctions regime in order to safeguard the livelihoods of ordinary citizens.

Beyond the humanitarian crisis, however, the US should consider more radical approaches to North Korea that go beyond sanctions.

Donald Trump, the former US president, was willing to consider this more radical approach, in part because he was more taken with grand gestures and foreign policy spectacles than with day-to-day political calculations. He attempted the top-down approach of engaging directly with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader. But Trump frankly didn’t understand the terms of engagement and, when frustrated by North Korea’s apparent lack of reciprocity, fell back on the default policy of applying even more sanctions. The virtue of Trump’s approach was that it established, at least on the surface, a measure of symmetry between the two sides: two “deciders” sweeping aside the procedural requirements to hammer out a deal. But, in the end, Trump �ɲ�����’t willing to abandon the underlying carrot-stick mentality.

No US administration has seriously considered the “Chinese option” of undertaking a break-through agreement with North Korea comparable to the Nixon-Kissinger approach of the 1970s. Such an approach would reduce and eventually eliminate economic sanctions in order to facilitate North Korea’s engagement with the global economy in the expectation that it will become a more responsible global actor, which China has in fact become (certainly in comparison to its Cultural Revolution days). Constrained by the rules of the global economy, nudged away from illegitimate and toward legitimate economic activities, and cognizant of the importance of preserving new trade ties, North Korea would still possess weapons of mass destruction — as well as a considerable conventional military — but would be less likely to consider using them.

The US took such a radical move with China in the 1970s in order to gain a geopolitical edge with the Soviet Union. It could do the same with North Korea today in order to gain some leverage over China.

The major objection, of course, is that the US would unilaterally give up a powerful tool of influence by removing sanctions on North Korea. But, as has been detailed above, sanctions haven’t been effective. Instead of more coercive sticks, perhaps the United States should consider better carrots.

To persuade North Korea to reduce its nuclear weapons program, the US should consider offering something akin to the Agreed Framework but substituting renewable energy for the civilian nuclear power plants of that deal. With Chinese and South Korean cooperation, the US could offer to help North Korea leapfrog to an entirely different economy independent of fossil fuels. It was, after all, the huge jump in energy prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to precipitate North Korea’s agricultural and industrial collapse, from which it has never really recovered. A new energy grid that eliminates the country’s dependency on imported energy would be of great interest to the leadership in Pyongyang.

The current standoff between North Korea and the rest of the world is based on two fundamental misconceptions. North Korea believes that its nuclear weapons program provides it with long-term security. And the rest of the world believes that economic sanctions will eventually force North Korea to give up that program. The two misconceptions have generated a series of failed agreements and failed negotiations.

The US, in particular, must consider instead a different kind of approach based not on bigger sticks, but better carrots that can give North Korea what it really wants: engagement with the global economy on its own terms based on a stronger and more self-sufficient domestic economy. A more prosperous North Korea that is no longer backed into a corner would be a benefit to its own citizens, to the overall security of the Korean Peninsula and to the international community more generally.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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French ire led to the withdrawal of its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra. This was particularly surprising given France’s strong political and security ties — not to mention historical, as America’s oldest ally — to both nations. Inexplicably, President Emmanuel Macron did not recall his ambassador to London, prompting some to posit that after Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, it didn’t matter as much.

The Raucous Sound of AUKUS

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It’s also very likely that Macron, who has been Europe’s strongest advocate on behalf of a stand-alone European defense capability — i.e., less dependence on the US — did not want to alienate Britain in his efforts.

Prenez un Grip!

Leave it to Britain’s blunt-speaking prime minister, Boris Johnson, to succinctly lend some reality to the blow-up among allies. Speaking in Washington, DC, Johnson it was “time for some of our dearest friends around the world to prenez un grip about all this and donnez moi un break” — to get a grip and give him a break. A “stab in the back” was how the French publicly described the situation following the announcement of the agreement.

Johnson has it right. This was not a betrayal of the North Atlantic alliance, nor France’s especially close ties with Britain or America, or its strong relationship with Australia. While there are unquestionably important strategic elements of this deal, it is a commercial one. Australia wanted to boost its naval defense capabilities in the increasingly competitive and dynamic Western Pacific.

France’s conventionally-powered subs would not have been state of the art, requiring periodic surfacing for refueling, and wouldn’t be available until 2035. Moreover, Canberra and Australian politicians had already begun to express reservations over these deficiencies and the exorbitant cost.

Enter the Americans, who apparently invited the British to join. In the world of diplomacy and international affairs, all issues are understood to be open for discussion and negotiation. Business is something else, however. Allies and adversaries regularly compete for business and commercial deals. Governments back their businesses and even add sweeteners from time to time to clinch the deal. It’s understood; everyone does it. It’s business — not personal and not political.

The surprise here is that Paris seemed to be caught unaware of the American-British offer. The French should have suspected others might be talking to the Australians, especially as their own deal was beginning to sour. Their embassies in Washington, London and Canberra, doubtlessly staffed with some of their top diplomats and intelligence and military personnel, should have picked up on it. That is what embassies are for, among other things.

What Is It Good For?

Political sensibilities aside, is this the right undertaking for the three countries? A somewhat qualified answer would be yes. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly made clear America will compete with China in the Western Pacific and around the world. To date, America has shouldered the lion’s share of the security responsibilities in that region, though Japan, South Korea, Australia, Britain and even France also play roles.

Providing the Australians with nuclear-powered subs greatly enhances their own defense capabilities and augments what the US and others are doing to shore up security in the Western Pacific.

It is a genuine security enhancement for the West, giving pause to the Chinese, who themselves possess about a dozen nuclear-powered subs, most dedicated to their ballistic missile submarine fleet. (It is important to note that the AUKUS deal will not provide Australia with nuclear weapons of any kind.)

So, Australian nuclear-powered submarines provide an excellent complement to both American and British nuclear-powered subs as well as those French nuclear submarines deployed to the region. Moreover, while the others deploy their submarines around the world, Australia will likely be confined to the Western Pacific, giving the Western allies a greater presence.

Other Asia-Pacific nations either hailed the deal or remained silent, the latter owing to sensitive trade and other economic arrangements with China they do not wish to jeopardize. After all, they saw what may have provoked all of this, namely China’s unusually harsh response to Australia’s call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, including the still unproven lab leak theory.

Canberra was blasted with a torrent of shockingly virulent verbal attacks from Beijing, which then accused Australia of “dumping” its wines on China and imposed daunting tariffs on future imports. The result was a precipitous decline in Australian wine exports to China, down as much as 96% in the final quarter of 2020.

The response shocked the Australians, who have maintained strong and important trade ties with Beijing and had sought to remain out of the US-China wrangling. But that all changed after Beijing’s tough-guy actions. Anti-China sentiment is now at a peak in Australia’s Parliament and among the population. More importantly, the overreaction drove Canberra right back into the waiting arms of its long-time ally, the US. Beijing’s so-called wolf-warrior actions against Australia were uncalled for and most definitely counterproductive.

A Win for Biden and the US

France’s ruffled feathers notwithstanding, the AUKUS deal leverages one of America’s strongest assets in the competition with China, namely its ability to forge alliances and partnerships with nations around the world, based not only on shared interests but very often on shared values. China has no such alliance network — Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and a handful of others hardly amount to what the US has managed in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

It is perfectly consistent with Biden’s repeated assertion that he will forge stronger ties with our allies and work to strengthen alliance networks. No one should be surprised with this natural evolution, a win-win for all involved.

One Asian nation whose response and views will be critical to US interests is India. India is a member of a new, American-initiated group known as the Quad, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US. New Delhi has distanced the AUKUS deal from the Quad but otherwise remained neutral in its response, though commentary ranges from strong endorsement to equally strong criticism and warnings of an Indo-Pacific arms race.

The latter may be a bit exaggerated. Australia already has submarines, and soon these will be nuclear-powered, allowing them to remain submerged much longer or even indefinitely, depending on whether their fuel is high or low-enriched uranium. The latter would require surfacing about every 10 years or so to refuel.

But that still leaves the question of France. One might have and, indeed, should have expected some heads up to the French in advance of the announcement. France is a core indispensable member of NATO and one of America’s most important allies.

The countries have already begun to patch up their tiff. Biden and Macron spoke last week and will meet next month when Biden attends the G-20 summit. The US president endorsed his French counterpart’s call for greater European defense autonomy, “consistent with NATO” objectives and obligations. Macron returned his ambassador to Washington.

Nevertheless, Washington would be wise to find some way to include Paris in this deal. If its underlying basis is security and strengthening alliances, then why not include this vital ally? France already possesses significant blue-water naval capabilities as well as genuine interests in the Pacific, with territories in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna.

Moreover, the French could be brought in to supply or develop the nuclear-power trains for the Australian submarines using low-enriched uranium, which fuel France’s nuclear subs. (Britain and the US use high-enriched uranium.) The use of would also help keep AUKUS from potentially running afoul of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is better to have France on board the AUKUS fleet than not. The most awkward bit: What to do with the added “F”?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Nixon’s was, of course, a calculated craziness. “When the wind is southerly,” Tricky Dick certainly could distinguish “a hawk from a handsaw,” as Hamlet famously put it.

Half a century later, America has had to deal with a different kind of crazy in the White House. Although Donald Trump has insisted that he’s a “stable genius,” all the evidence suggests otherwise. After Trump lost the 2020 election, even those in his close circle of advisers began to question the president’s sanity. There was a distinct possibility that a real mad man now held the reins of power and that he was willing to do pretty much anything to stay in the Oval Office, up to and including a coup.

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Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was one of the most prominent members of this group of the concerned. In their new book, “I Alone Can Fix This,” Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker how Milley considered Trump’s declaration of fraud after the November elections a “Reichstag moment,” with the president potentially using false charges of electoral misconduct to subvert the democratic process and remain in charge. Milley began to strategize on how to prevent Trump from using the military toward that end.

According to another recent book, “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley went further. On two occasions, just before the elections and after the January 6 insurrection, he  his Chinese counterpart to provide reassurances that the United States �ɲ�����’t planning on starting a war. He also told advisers to keep him informed of any presidential decisions around the use of nuclear weapons.

Those specific dangers have passed. Trump is out of the White House. The right-wing coup didn’t take place. But now Milley, who has continued on in his position into the Biden administration, finds himself at the center of controversy because of these recent revelations. Trump, not surprisingly,  Milley’s actions “treasonous,” a charge repeated by  and the right-wing media as part of  that Milley be fired.

The Vindman Argument

Almost everyone else has been quietly relieved that someone like Milley was in place to put a policy straitjacket on the madman in the Oval Office. Interestingly, it’s not just right-wing lunatics who have voiced reservations about Milley.

Alexander Vindman came to public attention during the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. Here was military rectitude personified: a lieutenant colonel working at the National Security Council who went through all the proper channels to voice his concern about the pressure Trump was putting on Ukraine to launch an investigation into corruption charges involving Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Vindman gave testimony twice to Congress at great personal cost. When the Senate acquitted Trump, Vindman was booted off the National Security Council and forced out of the Army as well. Here, in other words, was someone who threw himself into the line of fire in order to call attention to presidential misconduct. You’d think he’d feel some affinity for Mark Milley. Not so.

In an  for The Washington Post, Vindman argues that Milley should have simply resigned. He should have “publicly expressed his concerns and joined other senior leaders, including Cabinet officials, who stepped down after Jan. 6, which would have been a proactive move against further abuse of power,” Vindman maintains. “Instead, the reporting suggests, Milley blustered to subordinates, raised grave concerns with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, sometime in the same period, sought to circumvent or subvert the chain of command.”

But wait, wouldn’t resignation have given Donald Trump exactly what he wanted, an opportunity to replace Milley with someone more pliable? Vindman disagrees: “I am befuddled by the notion that only Milley was standing between a madman and Armageddon. That is the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster. That is not the way the U.S. military operates. Any one of the other chiefs of staff or the vice chairman would have stepped up and continued to serve as a guardrail.”

This all sounds reasonable. But it doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. Let’s first address the China question. Military officials routinely contact their counterparts as part of efforts to avoid war and deescalate conflict. “I didn’t consider that abnormal at all,” former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen  about Milley’s communications with Chinese officials.

Now let’s add some information from The Post columnist Josh Rogin to the effect that Milley �ɲ�����’t acting alone. Pentagon chief Mark Esper, who was also  with reassurances, even went so far as to delay the deployment of US ships as part of a planned exercise to make sure that the Chinese got the message.

Exceptional Circumstance

OK, then what about Milley’s insistence that he be involved in any decision to use nuclear weapons? In The Washington Post, Carrie Lee  this action as a breach of the chain of command, because a mere adviser to the president like Milley does not have such authority. US presidents can unilaterally order a nuclear attack and the rockets will fly a few minutes later.

But Milley’s intervention �ɲ�����’t unprecedented. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger did something similar late in Nixon’s term when he was worried that the president had gone well beyond playing crazy and had descended into despondency and drunkenness. 

Garrett Graff in Politico: “Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recalled years later that in the final days of the Nixon presidency he had issued an unprecedented set of orders: If the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them. Schlesinger feared that the president, who seemed depressed and was drinking heavily, might order Armageddon.”

As Fred Kaplan  in Slate, Milley didn’t go as far as Schlesinger. He only asked to be consulted, which he was fully entitled to do.

Let’s face it: This unilateral launch authority is insane. Just because such a mechanism was established during the Cold War doesn’t mean that it should endure. By all means, let’s have a reasonable discussion about how to constrain this power of the president. But in the meantime, let’s not insist on protocol in the exceptional circumstance that the president goes off the rails.

By Carrie Lee’s argument, Stanislav Petrov should have been fired for defying the requirements of the chain of command. In 1983, sitting in a bunker near Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov was  his superiors that nuclear missiles were on their way toward the Soviet Union. The computer system monitoring incoming attacks provided him with not one but five separate warnings. But Petrov hesitated to confirm the attacks because something felt wrong about the notifications.

As it turned out, the computer had made a mistake. Fortunately, Petrov did not blindly follow protocol.

The same argument concerning “exceptional circumstances” and “gut instincts” applies to Milley’s outreach to domestic politicians around his fears of a coup. It was on November 10 that Milley felt his presentiments of a possible putsch. The occasion was a security briefing on a “Million MAGA March,” which would draw thousands of Trump supporters to Washington five days later.

This mid-November march turned out to be a dud in terms of turnout. But on November 10, the situation was perilous. The president, refusing to concede the election, was making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. Earlier that summer, Trump  putting Milley in charge of a military crackdown on civil rights protests and bruited the possibility of shooting demonstrators, all of which Milley pushed back against.

A month after the elections, Trump himself would  of declaring martial law to overturn the results. And, of course, on January 6, a MAGA march turned into an authentic insurrection. So, yes, Trump was increasingly out of control and dictatorial. Milley was not imagining things.

Milley made the decision to talk to policymakers on both sides of the aisle. And what was his message? Did he rally the anti-Trump forces? Did he come up with his own plot to counter what Christopher Caldwell, in a frankly ridiculous piece in The New York Times,  as little more than “mayhem”?

No, Milley had a different message. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he  the policymakers. “We’re going to have a peaceful transfer of power. We’re going to land this plane safely. This is America. It’s strong. The institutions are bending, but it won’t break.” In other words, Milley was promising an anodyne adherence to the rule of law, not its subversion.

Institutional Craziness

A madman is, by definition, someone who is not playing by the rules. But what happens when the rules themselves are mad? The president’s unilateral authority to launch nuclear weapons is one such example of institutionalized insanity. The two-decade war in Afghanistan was another case of extended craziness. And what of the decision, year after year, to bestow upon the Pentagon another $700 billion when so many urgent needs are not being met at home and abroad?

Mark Milley’s record of standing up to that kind of crazy is not so good. He’d never previously questioned nuclear protocols (that I know of). He tried to persuade Biden to keep US troops in Afghanistan in an emotional but not terribly substantive  earlier this year. He has never shown any Eisenhower-like skepticism of the military-industrial complex.

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It took considerable courage to stand up to Trump and his coterie of yes-men in the waning days of that presidency. I’m glad that someone was available at the time who knew how to put on a straitjacket and tie it tight.

But right now, this country needs a different kind of courage to address a different kind of crazy. We dodged the bullet of a military coup. But we’re still dealing with the reality of a military that has way too much money and way too much power. The military stood up to Trump, but who will stand up to the military?

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Several weeks ago came news that the FBI had a brazen scheme by an Iranian intelligence network to kidnap an Iranian-born US citizen who is a prominent of the Islamic Republic.  The plan was to abduct her from the streets of Brooklyn, spirit her to Venezuela via “maritime evacuation” using “military-style speedboats” and from there deliver her to Iran.  The plan was part of a broader scheme entailing the seizure of other individuals in Canada and the United Kingdom.

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The elaborate operation, which the head of the FBI’s New York field office as “not some far-fetched movie plot,” is a flagrant gesture on Iran’s part at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to diplomatically engage Tehran on nuclear proliferation issues. What stands out from this episode is how much Tehran is willing to extend US–Iranian hostility onto the American homeland and how little it seems to fear the prospect of retaliation.

The Saudi Ambassador

The thwarted abduction is reminiscent of an even more audacious on US territory by Iranian agents a decade ago. In the fall of 2011, the FBI broke up an operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. The plan was directed by the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that conducts clandestine operations beyond the country’s borders. The plot blowing up the Saudi diplomat at an upscale restaurant popular among Washington’s political elite, followed by the bombing of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and in Argentina. The high likelihood of mass casualties at the restaurant was dismissed by the operation’s US-based organizer as “no big deal.”

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The plot organizer to outsource the bombings to the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico, which the FBI later described as having “access to military-grade weaponry and explosives, and has engaged in numerous acts of violence, including assassinations and murders.” As part of the deal with the cartel, the organizer promised to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico. The plan unraveled when the organizer reached out to an individual he believed was a cartel member but who was actually an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

Reporting on the foiled plot, the Washington Post that it resembled “an international cloak-and-dagger operation that reads like the plot of a Bond novel.” Robert Mueller, the FBI director at the time, that “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost.” James R. Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, that “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.”

At the time, the Obama administration was looking to wind down the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as find a way to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Although then-Vice-President Biden the botched assassination plot as “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises upon which nations deal with one another”, the White House did little beyond prosecuting the hapless Iranian organizer and imposing sanctions on several Quds Force officials.

James Mattis on Obama’s Response

The tepid response was particularly criticized by General James Mattis, the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military operations in the greater Middle East. He was dismayed that President Barack Obama kept the details of “the enormous savagery of the intended attack” from the American public and failed to respond forcefully to the provocation.

Obama would eventually fire Mattis from his CENTCOM post, in part due to the latter’s frequent of the president’s approach toward Iran. Once in civilian life, Mattis publicly lambasted Obama’s response to the attempted assassination. Speaking at a in 2013, he claimed the plot was the result of a decision “taken at the very highest levels in Tehran.” He further asserted that “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free,” and “They have been basically not held to account. … I don’t know why the attempt on [the Saudi ambassador] �ɲ�����’t dealt with more strongly.”

In his 2019 , Mattis blamed the lax US reply on Obama’s keenness to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He also elaborated on his earlier criticism, lamenting that “We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation.” He added:

“Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”

In the end, it was Obama’s successor who delivered the kind of reprisal Mattis thought necessary. In early January 2020, the Trump administration launched a drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the long-time Quds Force commander, while he was on a secret visit to Baghdad. Hundreds of miles away on the very same night, a drone in Yemen targeted but missed Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior leader in the Quds Force. Washington had long accused Soleimani and Shahlai of being the key Iranian officials in putting the bomb plot into motion.

Biden’s Conundrum

Like Obama, President Biden now confronts a conundrum: how to shore up eroding US deterrence resolve vis-à-vis an increasing risk-acceptant Tehran while also keeping it in good enough humor to extract significant nuclear concessions. So far, he has eschewed Mattis’ advice about how to dissuade Iran from mounting further attacks on American soil.

In contrast to his outrage a decade ago, Biden has opted to keep personally silent about the Brooklyn abduction plot while his administration treats it as a matter for law enforcement. It seems unlikely that the incoming Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will find this response a cause for restraint.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Although certainly distorted by the powerful, US democracy is not entirely scripted. If nothing else, the victory of Donald Trump in 2016 should have dispelled this particular misconception since the array of forces within the Republican Party, the intelligentsia and Wall Street were initially unified against him. By the same token. the come-from-behind victory of Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush in her House race in Missouri in 2020 also demonstrates, on a smaller scale, that US elections cannot be predicted in advance.

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Iranian elections, on the other hand, are generally considered semi-democratic at best. Here, a true deep state of clerics and security organs really does stage-manage the elections in often quite transparent ways. This year, for instance, the Guardian Council of clerics and lawyers qualified only seven presidential candidates out of the 592 that registered. Forty women threw their hats into the ring, but the council  all of them. It also made sure that no viable reformist candidates would compete in the race.

As a result, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi handily won the election last week. Just as US President Joe Biden was declaring in his first European trip that “America is back” — by which he meant that an internationally engaged America is back — the recent Iranian election has been an opportunity for the Iranian conservatives known as principlists to declare their return to power. Raisi will take over from the reformist President Hassan Rouhani, who had staked his political career on a nuclear deal with the United States and a reduction of US economic sanctions, which was initially a winning bet. Thanks to Trump’s rejection of that nuclear deal and his ratcheting up of sanctions, however, the reformist agenda lost credibility, if not among the population then at least among Iran’s ruling elite.

Many Iranian voters were so disgusted by what was on offer in the recent election that they refused to vote. The turnout, under 50%, was the lowest since the revolution of 1979. Perhaps most telling was the candidate who came in second place. Actually, it �ɲ�����’t a person at all: it was “void.” More than 4 million votes were invalid.

Combined with the number of voters who stayed home, those who voided their ballots sent a signal that they, at least, know a sham when they see one. If one wants to be optimistic, the low-turnout election reveals just how strong the pro-democratic constituency is in the country. And ironically, this poor showing demonstrates that elections do matter in Iran since the Guardian Council had to go to great lengths to guarantee its preferred outcome.

When Trump won in 2016, he set about transforming US foreign and domestic policy. The swing in Iranian governance from reformist to conservative might be expected to produce a similar sea change in how Iran deals with the economy, its nuclear program and the outside world. But Raisi may end up selling the reformist agenda better than the reformists themselves.

The Nuclear Deal

The United States and Iran have just  a sixth round of negotiations on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It’s just possible that the two sides, in negotiations facilitated by the European Union, will come to an agreement before Raisi assumes the presidency in August. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, for instance, is  about a quick and positive conclusion to the talks.

But even if such an early agreement is not forthcoming, there’s no reason to expect that Iran will suddenly pull out of the negotiations. True, the JCPOA was integral to the reformist program, and the reformists were just voted out of office. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed the agreement in 2015 and continues to do so. Raisi himself has expressed support for the deal, with the caveats that it was America’s fault for jeopardizing the agreement and that he’s no fan of negotiations for the sake of negotiating.

Raisi is looking to tread a fine line. His election campaign was based largely on improving the Iranian economy, and that will require the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear-related sanctions. At the same time, he has made clear that he’s  in following the reformist agenda of using the nuclear deal as a cornerstone of rapprochement with the West. He stated this week that Iran’s missile program is not up for discussion — something that might have figured in post-JCPOA negotiations — and he is not looking to meet with President Biden.

“The Americans trampled on the JCPOA and the Europeans failed to live up to their commitment,” Raisi . “I reiterate to the US that you were committed to lifting the sanctions — come back and live up to your commitments.”

That’s a fair assessment of what happened under Trump (the trampling part) and what has so far failed to happen under Biden (the lifting of sanctions part). Still, if both sides return to the JCPOA even without future agreements, it would be an improvement over the dangerous impasse of the last few years.

So, the message is acceptable. The messenger, however, is problematic. Accused of gross human rights violations from his time as a prosecutor in the 1980s and a judge after that, Raisi was  in a 2019 Treasury Department sanctions list. So, Iran’s new president is going to face some difficulties traveling to the West and will not likely give a speech at the UN General Assembly meetings in New York as his predecessors routinely did. Given his reception in the West, it’s not surprising that Raisi is unenthusiastic about a detente with his detractors.

Yet because Raisi will now be presiding over a state that hews closer to the conservative views of the clerical establishment, there will be less political  at the top and Raisi may very well be able to sell an agreement at home more effectively than the reformists.

The Economy

The Iranian economy is a mess. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the country  significant contractions in GDP of 6% in 2018 and nearly 7% in 2019. With Trump applying maximum pressure on Iran, Europe was supposed to pick up the slack. In fact, trade with Europe  by an astonishing 85% after 2017 as European countries buckled under the threat of secondary sanctions from the Trump administration.

The rise in prices for consumer goods, particularly gas,  widespread protests throughout Iran at the end of 2019, to which the government responded with force. US-imposed sanctions, the disruptions of COVID-19 and chronic budget deficits have all  to the inflation that generates a good deal of public discontent in the country.

In the late 1990s and the 2000s, Iran  a huge expansion of its middle class from below 30% of the population to nearly 60%. This middle class generally supported the modern, outward-looking agenda of reformists like Rouhani, who served two presidential terms beginning in 2013.

Instead of cultivating that constituency, however, the Trump administration undercut the reformists by withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and applying punitive measures that hurt the middle class. This was not a case of unintended consequences. As Ryan Costello at Responsible Statecraft, elements of the US far right quite consciously supported hardliners in Iran as the political figures most likely to unwittingly precipitate an uprising and, ultimately, the collapse of the regime. The maximum pressure campaign of the Trump years was designed with the same ends in mind.

Instead of mobilizing another Green Movement, which protested the last hardliner to preside over Iran’s political system, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the return of the conservatives to power will more likely provoke apathy or even eventually support for anti-Western policies. “A decade of economic stagnation caused by sanctions and broken international promises has brought Iran’s middle class to a point that it may reconsider its future as a force for political moderation and globalization,” economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani .

Raisi, meanwhile, has promised to fight corruption and economic mismanagement in the Iranian economy. He has his work cut out for him. The country  149 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Bribery and favoritism are , while a number of officials have been prosecuted for embezzlement and influence-peddling. It’s going to be difficult to root out corruption since the system basically runs on clientelism. The new patrons who take over the government apparatus expect to siphon off a portion of the state’s wealth for distribution through their patronage system.

As a result, Raisi might find it easier to improve Iran’s economy by negotiating a reduction of external sanctions than a reduction of internal corruption.

Regional Relations

One of the side benefits of the Biden administration’s rethink of relations with Saudi Arabia is that it has forced Riyadh to hedge its bets in the region. Trump lavished praise on the Saudis, even as they were killing Yemenis, assassinating a Washington Post columnist and jailing human rights activists. Under Trump, the United States and Saudi Arabia bonded on their anti-Iran agenda.

Now, with the Biden administration pulling back from its support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and criticizing the Saudi record on human rights, Riyadh has begun  with Iran to mend their relationship. Those discussions, which began last month in Baghdad, cover a number of flashpoints, but particularly the places where the two countries are competing for influence such as Yemen and Iraq.

Shortly after his electoral victory, Raisi announced that he wanted to improve relations with the Gulf Arab states. He singled out Saudi Arabia, which  diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016. “There are no obstacles from Iran’s side to re-opening embassies,” Raisi . “There are no obstacles to ties with Saudi Arabia.”

A rapprochement between these two regional hegemons, however superficial, could significantly improve the prospects for reducing tensions in the region. And that, in turn, could be good news for a Biden administration that so desperately wants to shift its attention away from Middle East conflicts.

In contrast to hawks like , I certainly do not root for the hardliners to win in Iranian elections. I believe that the Iranian system, led by the reformists, can evolve in a more democratic, more peaceful and more equitable direction.

But in the short term, the victory of Ebrahim Raisi might just be good news. After all, he supports the nuclear deal, needs the reduction of US sanctions to fulfill his economic promises and is open to better relations with his neighbors. Imagine if Ahmadinejad, Iran’s version of Trump, had returned to power. Fortunately, the Guardian Council disqualified him as well. That’s not a bad lesson for Congress, as it  the possibility of Trump’s return to public office.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Iran’s Hardliners Are Back appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Raisi has a record of cracking down on government opponents, and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with US President Joe Biden. While incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate, held out the of broader talks after the US returned to the JCPOA, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with Washington.

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Could Raisi’s victory have been averted if Biden had rejoined the Iran nuclear deal right after coming into the White House and enabled Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of US sanctions before the election? Now we will never know. 

The US withdrawal from the agreement under Donald Trump in 2018 drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated . But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty, and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic. 

US sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.

If actions speak louder than words, the of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22, based on the illegal, unilateral US sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over US policy.

Biden Takes His Time

Since Biden took office on January 20, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA or not. As a presidential primary candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders promised to simply rejoin the nuclear deal on his first day as president. Iran has always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it. 

Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna, Austria, did not begin until April 6. His failure to rejoin the agreement on taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “l�𱹱��������” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions. 

Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel. 

Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from America’s European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations, but would not allow the US to them out for a long time. 

An unnamed US official raised hopes for an agreementRaisi takes office on August 3, noting that it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that. But a State Department spokesman said talks when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then. 

Will They or Won’t They?

Even if Biden had rejoined the nuclear deal, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of US sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position. It would have also set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.

If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the US or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to quickly rejoin the deal during his first months in office will loom large over future events and his legacy as president.

If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe-dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the US and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a .

If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of US sanctions. 

On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of majorities of their people who want peace. In doing so, the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran. While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks and telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.

Move Faster

On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office. 

Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Barack Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of Obama’s agreement to stand as a long-term US policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides — Americans, allies and enemies alike.

Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in. They must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Biden Helped Hardliner Raisi Win in Iran appeared first on 51�Թ�.

First, it became known that the US has been reaching out to North Korea through several channels, starting in mid-February, but it has not heard back. North Korea then published two statements within as many days by two high-ranking officials. On March 16, Kim Yo-Jong — the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un — the joint US-South Korea military exercise, warning that if Seoul dares “more provocative acts,” North Korea may abrogate the Inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement of 2018. She also cautioned the US that if it “wants to sleep in peace for [the] coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.” Two days later, First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-Hui was saying that North Korea sees no reason to return to nuclear talks with Washington, calling its outreach a “cheap trick.”

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These statements coincided with a warning by the head of the US military’s Northern Command that North Korea might begin flight testing an improved design of its intercontinental ballistic missiles “in the near future.” On March 23, Pyongyang tested two cruise missiles before qualitatively upping the ante with a short-range ballistic missile test on March 25, constituting a breach of UN Security Council resolutions.

Although these developments may suggest that a further escalation on the Korean Peninsula is inevitable, North Korea has thus far been following its traditional playbook by signaling a message that leaves all options on the table, ensures maximum room for maneuver and, at least from Pyongyang’s view, places the ball in Washington’s court. North Korea is raising the stakes ahead of the conclusions of the policy review process in the US, while simultaneously conveying the message that the door is open for reengagement at some point. “In order for a dialogue to be made,” Choe said, “an atmosphere for both parties to exchange words on an equal basis must be created.”

Biden’s North Korea Policy Review

Further developments in US-North Korea relations will, to a significant extent, depend on the outcomes of the policy review process. Although this process is not yet complete, it is apparent that the policies of the Biden administration will differ significantly from those of the previous administration under Donald Trump.

First, we should not expect Trump’s personalized diplomacy to continue under President Joe Biden. Rather, the US is trying to restore a consultative process by involving the regional actors in Northeast Asia more directly in the North Korea question — and possibly trying to (once again) multilateralize the nuclear issue in the longer run.

During the visits of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea earlier this month, Blinken stated that the Biden administration was consulting closely with the governments of South Korea, Japan and other allied nations. He also that Beijing “has a critical role to play” in any diplomatic effort with Pyongyang. Whether more consultation leads to actual consensus remains to be seen.

Second, the US will most likely propose a processual solution to the nuclear issue. In an for The New York Times in 2018, Blinken himself argued that the best deal the US could reach with North Korea “more than likely will look like what Barack Obama achieved with Iran.” He wrote that an interim agreement “would buy time to negotiate a more comprehensive deal, including a minutely sequenced road map that will require sustained diplomacy.”

Third, the new administration seems to place a greater focus on the human rights issue in its policies on North Korea. During his visit to Seoul, Blinken made clear that the US would not only address security concerns, but also the North Korean government’s “widespread, systematic abuses” of its people.

Three Lessons From the Past

Act, not react: As past experiences with North Korea have shown, it is now critical for the United States to act quickly and clearly communicate its new North Korea strategy to both its allies and Pyongyang. If official communication channels are blocked, the facilitation activities of individual European Union member states and/or Track 1.5 intermediaries could be helpful. Until then, it is crucial not to get sucked into rhetorical tugs-of-war with North Korea.

If the international community fails to act quickly on North Korea, Pyongyang will likely once again resort to a crisis-inducing policy, thus forcing the international community to react to its expected provocations, rather than preventing further escalation in the first place.

Separate the issues: The North Korean nuclear issue is complex. Solving the military and security components of this issue will inevitably require addressing a range of related political, diplomatic, economic and even historical issues. As the case of the Six-Party Talks has shown, however, one individual negotiation process can quickly become overwhelmed by the multitude of challenges and issues associated with the nuclear issue. As such, it is essential to establish adequate formats with the right participants to address the respective issues and challenges.

There is a role for Europe: Although there is no doubt that the EU is only a peripheral player in Korean Peninsula security issues, the current debate on a new Indo-Pacific strategy provides an important opportunity for Brussels to critically reflect on its own approach to North Korea, as it has failed to achieve its stated goals — i.e., denuclearizing the peninsula, strengthening the nonproliferation regime and improving the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Although the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will not be front and center of this new strategy, the EU needs to show greater political will to contribute toward solving the pending security issues in the region if it wants to strengthen its profile as a security actor in the region.

*[This  was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post It’s Time to Act, Not React, on North Korea appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Cautious optimism toward President Joe Biden is very much based on his commitment to Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement in 2015: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden, along with his fellow Democrats, excoriated then-President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

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While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the US will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. After withdrawing from the agreement, the US is in no position to make such demands, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has clearly and eloquently , reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the US does so.

Biden should have announced US reentry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Senator Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply , “I would re-enter the agreement on day one of my presidency.”

It �ɲ�����’t just Sanders. Then-candidate Senator Kirsten  said during the Democratic primary, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches.” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating — and implicitly rejecting — Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the US will rejoin.

If Biden just rejoins the JCPOA, all of the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran will be subject to the same International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the United States. That is how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union — and the United States.

Neocons and Hawks

So, why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020  supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured Biden that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties. But instead, he seems to be listening to opponents of the Iran deal telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him  to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden.

American neocons and hawks, including those inside his own administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his own hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of his previously deferential relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even  to launch a military attack on Iran if the US rejoins it, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently wrote in The Guardian, Israel’s own possession of dozens — or  — of nuclear weapons is the  in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows and to respond as required under US law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s real nuclear weapons, successive US administrations have chosen to “cry wolf” over non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. In December 2002, WINPAC’s director, Alan Foley, , “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” — even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that US forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find “not much, if anything.”

What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November 2020, the Iranian parliament  that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if US sanctions are not eased by February 21.

It’s Getting Complicated

To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18, and election season — when this issue will be hotly debated — begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the US — including lifting relevant sanctions — before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States. The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to try to appease neocons and warmongers — domestic and foreign — by bullying Iran, a partner in an international agreement he claims to support, to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

During his election campaign, candidate Biden to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If President Biden fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, he represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of US foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional US allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the US is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

So much is hanging in the balance, for the everyday people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of US sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After just weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Biden Should Rejoin the Iran Deal Before It’s Too Late appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Trump committed an act of pure will, with no serious legal argument related to the terms of the agreement. In the culture of international diplomacy, that usually signifies a betrayal of trust or an act of bad faith. In the democratic and free market tradition, the idea of a contract depends on the recognition of theoretical equality of status between the contracting partners. In real geopolitics, however, the hegemonic position of the United States means that acts of bad faith will always be permitted. It is a privilege of hegemonic power. Such acts will also be resented. 

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Just as Trump made a point of undoing anything associated with the Obama administration, many people have expected that US President Joe Biden would follow suit, seeking to overturn everything Trump so deliberately sabotaged. The AP article reminds us of Biden’s campaign promise to “seek to revive the deal,” while noting that the new administration insists “that Iran must first reverse its nuclear steps, creating a contest of wills between the nations.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Contest of wills:

A competition between two parties of approximately equal strength based on their refusal to agree on anything until one subdues the other by imposing a solution designed to narrowly avoid a catastrophe with uncontrollable consequences

Contextual Note

Many cultures feature the proverb, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” A logical corollary of the proverb would be: Where there are two wills there is no obvious way. But as Gary Grappo, in an article on 51�Թ�, explained this week, this contest of wills is not limited to Iran and the US. There are a number of other wills involved. And where there are several wills, the way will be extremely obscure. Or, just as likely, there will be no way at all.

Grappo, a former US ambassador and the current chairman of 51�Թ�, reminds us that there is the will of the other signatories of the original agreement, essentially the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union. In normal circumstances, faced with the prospect evoked by the Iranians of returning to the agreement they signed in 2015, the signatories would simply reaffirm their good faith, which has never wavered. But even if they were to express that intention, for the multiple reasons Grappo lays out in his article, the Biden administration is itself caught in the trap Trump knowingly laid out for future administrations. Because of its status as hegemon — aka the international bully who imposes the rules of the road in the name of democracy and civilized values — the US cannot allow itself to meekly admit that Trump’s obviously failed “maximum pressure” policy on Iran was an irresponsible mistake and a violation of the very idea of the rule of law. It’s a question of pride, but also of pressure from both rational and irrational voices.

The situation contains two major absurdities, which everyone is aware of but no one dares to speak about. Grappo correctly reports that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “have promised that the US will consult with … regional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia before making decisions or taking any action.” This could make sense if “consult with” amounts to nothing more than informing those nations of the state of negotiations. If it implies involving them in the discussion or seeking to accommodate their positions, there are two reasons to see this as wishful thinking, if not dangerous folly.

The first is that if the debate is truly about Iran’s military nuclear capacity, the insistence that the Israelis have a role in the debate is patently absurd. Israel has accomplished — totally illegally and with the benediction of the Western powers — exactly what the JCPOA is designed to prevent Iran from achieving. Israel is a nuclear power that, at the same time, denies its status as a nuclear power. In a rational world, a renegotiated treaty in which Israel has its say would require the dismantling of Israel’s nuclear capacity. No intelligent and informed diplomat on earth could imagine Israel accepting that condition.

The second absurdity concerns Saudi Arabia. Grappo evokes the need to address the question of “terrorism, terrorism financing, human rights, religious persecution, etc.” If Saudi Arabia’s interests were taken into account, the logical consequence of this would be to examine and eliminate the kingdom’s obvious practice of all those evils. The Saudis remain the heavyweight champions of Middle East terrorism. It was Saudis, after all (possibly with the complicity of members of the royal family), who engineered and executed 9/11, the only direct attack on the US since Pearl Harbor. For decades, the Saudis have been spreading Wahhabi jihadism globally, contributing to the rise of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. And who — other than Trump — can forget that it is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who kills journalists working for The Washington Post and is not averse to imprisoning or killing anyone else who too publicly opposes his regime?

And yet, on the subject of Israel and Saudi Arabia, Grappo tells us that “President Biden and his team will have to find a way to ensure that these governments’ concerns, fears and interests are taken into account.” If this has any meaning, that certainly means that there will be at least two wills too many in the contest

Historical Note

A former diplomat, Gary Grappo understands the thinking, positioning and maneuvering that must be going on within the Biden administration. He has presented a true and realistic account of the dilemma it is faced with. But the picture he paints is one of such a confusion of wills that imagining any solution with a reasonable chance of success requires believing in a world of diplomatic hyperreality — the equivalent of a stage play, where wills simply exist as the speeches characters express and never translate into concrete acts with consequences.

The representation of geopolitics as a spectacle of hyperreality may please the media, who thrive by presenting it in living color. It keeps the pundits who depend on it for their livelihood talking and writing. It may even distract the public’s attention for short periods, as it once did for Roman emperors. But history has its own laws that will consistently undermine even the most solidly constructed examples of hyperreality.

Wills are not the only forces at play here. Underlying the quandary of how the US might return to the JCPOA is the evolution of global power and hegemony over the past three decades. It began with an earthquake: the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

During the Cold War, the US could do pretty much anything it wanted in the so-called “free world,” knowing it was admired (for its dynamic economy), respected (for its power) and feared (for its might). Recent events have seriously reduced the level of admiration of the US across the globe. The actions of two presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, have seriously diminished respect for American power globally. Waging war on the basis of an obvious lie (Bush) and conducting foreign policy on the basis of whims and threats alone (Trump) have significantly reduced the credibility of any “reasoned position” the US takes to justify any action. Finally, the long series of military fiascos since the Vietnam War, along with two economic fiascos in the past 12 years, have transferred the fear people used to have of US might to a fear of the inadvertent catastrophes its policies provoke.

Barack Obama’s strategy with the JCPOA made some sense. It consisted of betting on the idea that a loosening of constraints would naturally provoke an evolution within Iranian society toward a less paranoid vision of the West and of America in particular. It would encourage what optimists like to think of as “the better angels” of the Iranian people. It also meant leaving the Middle East quagmire behind, a feature of Obama’s Asia Pivot. The process worked in a unified Vietnam once the US abandoned its mission to save the country from communism. The problem with such a strategy today for some people, including members of Congress, is that it scores no hegemonic points. And that is intolerable.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Iran Deal vs. the Logic of History appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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The foreign policy agenda  by Biden variously referred to: fortifying ties with America’s key allies and partners in Europe and Asia; serving notice to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Biden will challenge, “in a manner very different from my predecessor,” Moscow’s cyber threats and authoritarian moves against neighbors; challenging America’s new nemesis, China, on human rights, intellectual property and global governance but also offering cooperation when it serves US interests; calling out Saudi Arabia on Yemen and Myanmar on the recent coup; and recommitting the US to defending democracy and human rights and to upping immigration numbers into the US.

The one major foreign policy challenge staring President Biden directly in the face but not mentioned was Iran. During his election campaign, he had promised to re-enter the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear accord with Iran from which then-President Donald Trump had withdrawn the US in May 2018.

So Many Voices

Not mentioning the subject in this — Biden’s first major foreign policy address of his brief presidency — may have been a wise course of action. First, his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, have promised that the US will consult with America’s P5-plus-1 partners — Britain, France and Germany — as well as regional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia before making decisions or taking any action. Moreover, at this stage, speaking too critically or harshly so soon would only trigger further stubbornness and resistance from an already recalcitrant Iran. And speaking too hopefully would ignite strong pushback from members of Congress resistant to almost anything short of Tehran’s capitulation.

Rejoining the JCPOA is replete with challenges that Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, also faced but badly mishandled. Both Blinken and Sullivan have indicated that simply re-entering the nuclear agreement cannot be this administration’s sole objective. Any agreement with Iran that lasts into and through the next Republican administration must also address Iran’s growing missile arsenal and its meddling behavior in the Middle East, including in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Just getting these issues on the agenda with Tehran would be an achievement, given the Islamic Republic’s oft-stated opposition to such discussions. Nevertheless, Biden knows that to reach a genuinely enduring agreement that survives his presidency, these issues must be on the table. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, should also understand that for any agreement to offer his country predictability and stability in its international endeavors into the future, these issues are inescapable.

Iran isn’t the only party with whom the Biden administration will have to negotiate. First, there are America’s allies who are part of the accord and who, for the last four years, have battled to keep the JCPOA on life support. It will be Britain, France and Germany who will run the initial interference for the US before it can meet face to face with the Iranians. Furthermore, the US will have to have their firm support before it can reach out to the other P5-plus-1 members, China and Russia. So, winning their support will be vital to the administration’s success.

Second, there are America’s regional allies, most especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, who have a genuine — they might say existential — interest in the outcome of any future talks. There was considerable dissension among these countries in the run-up to the 2015 accord and in its aftermath. Some, most especially Israel, made their objections known publicly and undiplomatically. Nevertheless, their concerns were valid, and President Biden and his team will have to find a way to ensure that these governments’ concerns, fears and interests are taken into account.

Moreover, any dialog addressing the regional issues — whether on Iran’s malign activity in the Middle East or perhaps even the presence of US forces in the region — will likely have to include these countries. (How that might happen is a mystery, given that states like Saudi Arabia and Iran don’t yet officially recognize Israel.) What is essential for the Americans, however, is that these governments are somehow a part of the negotiations and that whatever results from the next round of negotiations is acceptable to the nations of the region most impacted. Blinken and Sullivan, chastened by the experience of 2015 and what came after, undoubtedly understand this.

The Invisible Partner at the Negotiating Table

Then, there is the final and likely most challenging party to future talks. That is the US Congress. Securing congressional approval for a follow-on agreement(s) and ensuring it endures beyond the Biden presidency will depend on winning that body’s approval. While Biden probably will not submit any new agreement to the Senate for approval, as the Constitution requires for formal treaties, he will nevertheless need to have at least its implicit support.

Biden cannot afford to make the mistake of Woodrow Wilson in 1918 with the League of Nations and President Obama in 2015 with the JCPOA. He must find a way to bring in key members from both the House and Senate, even if only indirectly, in order to ensure that whatever results reflects their concerns. If Biden and his team can satisfy the concerns of the other two major groups — America’s P5-plus-1 partners and regional allies — then they will likely have addressed many of Congress’ concerns. But he cannot afford either to take their support for granted or to neglect Congress. They will have to be engaged throughout the process.

Complexity (Times 100): Iran and All the Issues

Of course, there is also the heart of the issue: the longstanding distrust and animus between the US and Iran. The imperfect deal brokered by Obama and the withdrawal from it by Trump served to exacerbate these feelings among Americans and Iranians, respectively. So, the sides may be starting from a more difficult position than they did in 2012, when they initially began their dialog that culminated with the JCPOA. Hardliners on both sides have further hardened their positions, Republicans (and some Democrats, too) in the US and the all-powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its leadership in Iran. They’re not just polar opposites — they live at opposite ends of the galaxy.

Furthermore, the issues have been brought into stark relief as a result of the American exit and subsequent imposition of crushing sanctions on Iran, its leadership, banking institutions and the IRGC. The country’s economy is reeling, though it has managed to finally stabilize. But any notion or hope of significant growth that reaches rank-and-file Iranians and businesses is non-existent under US sanctions. In 2021 and beyond, a nation of some 84 million people must be a part of the international community and most especially the global economy. That can’t happen as long as US sanctions hang over Iran’s head. The choice is stark, albeit hard, for Iran’s leadership: continue on the path to nuclear capability or join the rest of the international community.

Despite Iran’s early declarations, an immediate US return to the JCPOA and suspension of sanctions prior to some of the aforementioned talks are a chimera. The Biden administration hasn’t taken the bait and shouldn’t. With sanctions in place, Biden has an advantage, no matter how much he may have opposed them in 2018.

The administration should use this advantage. So, at the very least, before rejoining the JCPOA, it should insist on Tehran’s acceptance of follow-on negotiations on: the various time horizons on Iran’s nuclear development with weapons implications; the range and numbers of missiles; more comprehensive inspections, including of military sites; and its involvement in countries of the region and support for various militias and groups almost universally viewed as terrorists. Iran’s hardliners see some of these issues — like missiles and support for militia groups in the Middle East — as necessary and even existential, but there may be no avoiding talking about them.

Iran doubtlessly has its chronic issues with the Americans, from threats of regime change to menacing military presence throughout the region, including US Navy aircraft carriers off its coast to American Air Force heavy bomber flights near its borders. It will also want some guarantees that whatever is agreed this time has some assurance of continuing. Then there are America’s non-nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, e.g., those relating to terrorism, terrorism financing, human rights, religious persecution, etc. These also are likely to become issues in any future talks.

The Main Thing

Hanging over all of this is the justifiably feared nuclearization of the Middle East. There can be no doubt that a nuclear-armed or -capable Iran would inevitably trigger similar strategic moves by Saudi Arabia and perhaps the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Such a development in the world’s most volatile region is nightmarish.

Resolving these supremely difficult issues will come down to some hard diplomacy and earnest, patient dialog. There is no military solution. Nuclear weapons can never be one either. And, as the previous administration’s “maximum pressure” approach demonstrated, Iran cannot be sanctioned into capitulating.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” It’s time for both sides to set their jaws to work.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will the US and Iran Meet Jaw to Jaw? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Under these inauspicious conditions, if you are brave enough to face down the cold and COVID to protest openly against the government of President Vladimir Putin, your reward may well be a trip to jail. If you’re very good at your job of protesting, you might win the grand prize of an attempt on your life.

Yet, for the last two weeks, Russians have poured into the streets in the tens of thousands. Even in the Russian Far East, protesters  out in Yakutsk (45 below zero) and Krasnoyarsk (22 below). Putin has predictably responded with force, throwing more than 5,000  into jail.

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Media coverage of the Russian protests focus, not surprisingly, on Alexei Navalny. After recovering in Germany from an assassination attempt, the Russian opposition leader returned to Moscow on January 17. He was promptly arrested at the airport where his plane was rerouted. His close associates, who’d shown up at the original destination of his flight to welcome him home, were also detained. These arrests, and the government’s desire to lock Navalny away in prison for as long as possible, triggered the latest round of demonstrations throughout the country.

Putin has ruled over Russia for more than two decades. Because of the constitutional changes he rammed through last year, he has effectively made himself leader for life. Will these latest protests make a dent in his carapace of power?

Meanwhile, the US and Russian governments this week exhibited a modest form of engagement by extending the New START treaty on nuclear weapons for another five years. Despite this hopeful sign, no one expects anything close to a full reset of US–Russian relations during a Biden administration.

But as Putin faces protests in the street and US President Joe Biden deals with recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, the US and Russia might at least avoid direct conflict with one another. More optimistically — and can you blame a boy for dreaming? — the two countries could perhaps find common cause against the global scourges of nuclear weapons, climate change and pandemics.

Putin vs. Navalny

Although they face each other across the Russian chessboard, Putin and Navalny share some basic attributes. They are both adept politicians who know the power of visuals, symbols and stories. They rely on the media to sustain their popularity, Putin using state-controlled media and Navalny exploiting social media.

And they have both been willing to adjust their messages to grow their appeal among everyday Russians by turning to nationalism. Putin started out as a rather conventional Soviet bureaucrat, with a commitment to all of the ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. Even when he became the leader of Russia in 1999, he thought of himself as the head of a multiethnic country. Particularly after 2014 and the conflict with Ukraine, however, Putin  appeals to russky (ethnic) Russians rather than rossisky (civic) Russians. He has made the defense of ethnic Russians in surrounding regions — Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics — a priority for his administration.

Navalny, meanwhile, started out as a rather conventional Russian liberal who joined the reformist party Yabloko. Liberalism, however, has never really appealed to a majority of Russians, and parties like Yabloko attracted few voters. Navalny began to promote some rather ugly xenophobic and chauvinistic messages. As Alexey Sakhnin  in Jacobin:

“He participated in the far-right Russian Marches, waged war on “illegal immigration,” and even launched campaign “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” directed against government subsidies to poor, ethnic minority-populated autonomous regions in the south of the country. It was a time when right-wing sentiments were widespread, and urban youth sympathized with ultra-right groups almost en masse. It seemed to Navalny that this wind would fill his sails — and partly, it worked.”

Navalny used nationalism to wipe away any memories of his unpopular liberalism, but it was difficult to compete with Putin on that score. So, increasingly, the oppositionist focused on the corruption of the Putin regime, publishing  of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wealth and most recently a video tour of a huge on the Black Sea said to be the Russian president’s (which Putin denies).

With these critiques of the ruling elite’s corruption, Navalny can bring tens of thousands of angry protesters, particularly young people, onto the streets. Unlike present-day Belarus or Ukraine 2014, the Russian protesters don’t represent the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens. Putin remains a relatively popular figure in Russia. Although his approval ratings have dropped from the 80% range that was common five years ago, they still hover around 70%. US presidents would be thrilled with those numbers. Approval of the Russian government is considerably less —  — which suggests that Putin has successfully portrayed himself as somehow above everyday politics.

Putin Is Worried

Still, the Russian leader is worried. In his latest speech at the World Economic Forum, Putin spoke in apocalyptic terms of a deteriorating international situation. “The pandemic has exacerbated the problems and disbalances that have been accumulating,” he . “International institutions are weakening, regional conflicts are multiplying, and the global security is degrading.”

His comments on the global situation reflect more parochial concerns. Because of COVID-19, the Russian economy contracted  in 2020. Although the government implemented various measures to cushion the impact, many Russians are suffering as a result of rising unemployment and falling production. The Russian economy depends a great deal on sales of oil and natural gas. Any further reduction in global trade — either because of the pandemic or tariff wars — would complicate Russia’s economic recovery and consequently undermine Putin’s political position.

The immediate challenge comes from the parliamentary elections later this year. Putin’s United Russia party currently holds a comfortable majority in the Duma. The other two top parties are led by nationalists who are equally if not more fanatical — Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party. But a political force coalescing around a figure like Navalny could disrupt Putin’s balance of power.

That’s why Navalny returned to Moscow. And that’s why the Russian court decided this week to lock Navalny away for more than two years — for violations of parole that required him to report to the authorities that tried to kill him. Navalny has taken an enormous risk, while Putin is taking no chances. The Russian leader has long deployed a preemptive strategy against any potential rival. Those who dare to oppose him have been killed (Boris Nemtsov), poisoned (Vladimir Kara-Murza), jailed (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) or forced into exile (Garry Kasparov).

Civil society is also under siege in Russia, with activists vulnerable to charges of being, basically, spies and saboteurs under a  Yet the environmental movement, the women’s movement, the LGBT community and others continue to protest against the country’s authoritarian system. And these protests are not just taking place in relatively liberal enclaves in the western part of the country like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Large-scale demonstrations took place at the end of 2020 in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, over the arrest of the region’s independent-minded governor. While Navalny gets the press, civil society activists have quietly built up networks around the country that can turn people out onto the streets when necessary.

Like all authoritarians, Putin uses “law and order” arguments to his advantage. Russians have a horror of anarchy and civil strife. They have long favored an “iron fist” approach to domestic politics, which helps explain the persistent, posthumous fondness for Joseph Stalin, who had a 70% approval  in 2019. According to polling , three in four Russians believe that the Soviet era was the best period of time for Russia, and it certainly �ɲ�����’t the dissident movement of that period that made them nostalgic.

The protesters thus have to tread carefully to avoid losing popular support among a population fond of an iron fist but also deeply disgusted by the corruption, economic mismanagement and social inequality of the Putin era. The Russian opposition also has to grapple with the distinct possibility that getting rid of Putin will usher in someone even worse.

US-Russia Relations: A New START?

The extension of New START, the last nuclear arms control treaty in effect between Russia and the United States, is a spot of good news in an otherwise dismal outlook for relations between the two countries. Joe Biden has prided himself on his knowledge of and commitment to arms control. So, if the two countries can agree on terms of selective engagement, the next four years could be profitably taken up by a series of negotiations on military weaponry.

New START merely establishes ceilings on nuclear warheads for both sides and addresses only strategic, not tactical, nukes. So, as Stephen Pifer , a follow-on treaty could establish a ceiling on all nuclear warheads, for instance at 2,500, which would cover battlefield nuclear weapons and result in at least a  in the arsenals of the two sides. Another option for bilateral negotiations would be to focus on limitations to missile defense or, at the very least, cooperation to protect against third-party missile attacks. A third option would be to focus on conventional weaponry and constraints on weapons sales.

The Biden administration could even move more quickly with an announcement of a no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons — something Biden has  in the past — and agreeing with Moscow to de-alert intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) much as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev  of the nuclear triad, strategic bombers, back in 1991.

This arms control agenda is only part of a larger potential program of selective engagement. The US and Russia could return to their coordination around the Iran nuclear deal. They could explore ways to cooperate on global challenges like climate change and pandemics. They could even start addressing together the harmful effects of economic globalization, a topic Putin brought up in his recent Davos speech.

To do so, however, the two countries will have to manage the numerous points of friction in their relationship. For one thing, they’ve gone head-to-head in various proxy battles — in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. Russia is legitimately furious that NATO expanded to its very doorstep, and the United States is legitimately concerned about Russian interventions in its “near abroad,” most recently in Ukraine. The US has lots of  of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — not to mention Russian in a coup attempt in Montenegro that same year and its  in the presidential election in Madagascar two years later — and Russia is pissed off at US “democracy promotion” in the Color Revolutions and within Russia itself. Russia is eager to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring natural gas to Germany, while the US is eager to sell its own gas to its European ally. Then there’s Russia’s penchant for assassinating Russians in other countries and repressing protestors at home.

Any of these issues could scuttle cooperation between Moscow and Washington. One way of negotiating around this minefield is to delink the agendas of cooperation and conflict. Arms control advocates have a long history of doing just that by resisting calls to link other issues to arms control negotiations. Thus, the Iran nuclear deal focuses exclusively on the country’s nuclear program, not its missiles, not its relations with other countries in the region, not its human rights situation. The same lack of linkage has historically applied to all the arms control agreements between Washington and Moscow.

This strategy of delinking doesn’t mean that these other issues are completely off the table. They are simply addressed at different tables.

Those who desperately want a new cold war with Russia will not be happy with such a practical solution. They don’t want to talk with Putin about anything. As repugnant as I find the Russian leader, I have to acknowledge that he heads up an important global player and he has the support (for the time being at least) of much of his population. So, even as we challenge the Russian leadership’s conduct at home and abroad, we must also work with Moscow in the interests of global peace, prosperity and sustainability.

Of course, there’s another word for all this: diplomacy.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will the US and Russia Start Over? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Over the next few months, observers will be wondering how President Joe Biden intends to play the game of balancing change and continuity, especially after Donald Trump’s radical attempt to rewrite the rules of the game. One of the key issues on which Trump carried out his fanatical zeal was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran deal.

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Biden’s team has affirmed its intention to rejoin the nuclear deal, breaking with Trump and returning to Barack Obama’s status quo. But voices in the Biden administration have indicated that it will only happen if there is a significant change in the terms, which was also Trump’s position. As speculation mounts concerning Biden’s intentions, Al Jazeera offers the following subtitle to an on the JCPOA: “Iranian foreign ministry says deal ‘unchangeable’ after French President Macron calls for talks to include Saudi Arabia.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Unchangeable:

Not subject to the normal practice of politicians, which consists of exploiting every absurd pretext available to them in a political game to move the goalposts before restarting a game that they have themselves interrupted

Contextual Note

Trump, the former US president, promised change and to a certain extent delivered it. The most significant change in US foreign policy he managed to accomplish was sowing confusion across the globe by practicing an incomprehensible policy labeled “America First.” When applied to the Middle East and led by his viceroy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, it could have been called “Israel first.” This included some serious initiatives such as moving the US Embassy to Tel Aviv, endorsing the colonization of the Golan Heights, consolidating a kind of triumvirate of interests between the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and positioning Israel as an indefectible ally and trading partner of the Sunni oil states in the Gulf, thereby undermining the traditional obligation of Arab states to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 was an important component of Trump’s Israel first policy. For Trump, withdrawing from the deal was the ultimate symbol of his break with the politics of the Obama administration. Many assume that it will be the emblematic symbol of the Biden administration’s rupture with the Trump era. But it turns out to be far more complicated than just returning to the status quo ante Trump. Whether it’s the consequence of President Biden’s timidity or the success of Trump’s nationalistic propaganda, the Biden team appears to feel bound to imposing new conditions, perhaps to prove that Biden is not just a duplicate of Obama. Israeli interests play a role in that repositioning.

The easiest route for a Democratic president would be to apologize for Trump’s hubris, call the whole thing a mistake and proclaim the USA’s good faith by quietly returning to the deal on the same terms after that inadvertent interruption. But to be credible, American presidents must show they are tough. True tough guys don’t bend to the other party’s terms even when they are the one that betrayed all the other partners’ trust. Tough guys require compensation for their willingness to make a friendly gesture.

Curiously, French President Emmanuel Macron has stepped in to play a secondary tough guy role by casually insisting that Saudi Arabia should now be associated with the deal, a proposition that makes no sense at all. Macron has several good reasons to appear as a tough guy. He has an election coming up next year where he is pitted against the xenophobic Marine Le Pen. Part of his strategy in recent months has been to demonstrate that with Arabs and Muslims he’s capable of being a tough guy. He helpfully instructed the Muslim world in November 2020 that Islam was in crisis, just in case Muslims themselves hadn’t noticed. 

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, struck back with this cutting : “If the French authorities are worried about selling their huge cargoes of arms to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, it is better to reconsider their policies.” The Iranians cannot have missed the fact that Macron offered his remarks not to the signatories of the agreement or even to his own French media, but to the Saudi TV channel, Al Arabiya. Khatibzadeh was spot on about Macron’s real motive.

Historical Note

Since 1992, the departure of every sitting US president has always been followed by the arrival of a president from the opposing party. In 2001, Republican George W. Bush promised to reign as a “compassionate conservative,” a strategy designed to reassure the nation and create a sense of continuity with the Democrat, Bill Clinton. Bush subsequently demonstrated the full extent of his compassion by offering massive tax breaks to the rich and then going to war with a major portion of humanity.

Democrat Barack Obama owed his election to the enthusiasm of voters who rallied behind his theme of “hope and change” and his opposition to Bush’s wars in the Middle East. The Nobel committee was so impressed it immediately Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. Once in action, “hope and change” oddly morphed into “pretty much the same thing,” but with better PR than the Bush-Cheney team. That consolidated a different kind of change, within the Democratic Party itself, which now felt totally comfortable embracing the traditional free market ideology of the Republicans. It fulfilled the trend that Clinton had launched in the 1990s.

Obama, the peace candidate of 2008 who defeated the hawkish wife of Bill Clinton in the Democratic primaries, became the US president who dropped the most bombs on foreign countries. Under the Espionage Act, he more of the whistleblowers he had promised to protect than all other presidents combined. He installed and defended a profoundly military conception of US democracy, which extended to the militarizing of urban law enforcement, to the extreme detriment of the black community. His practical understanding of change was to shift as far away from his campaign promises as possible.

Donald Trump presented himself in the 2016 election as the ultimate outlier. To win over the voters disappointed by Obama’s policies, he promised to change everything. He definitely changed the idea of presidential style and its methods of communication. Trump promised much more, such as draining the swamp and bringing home US troops after ending the wars. He did neither. Instead, the institutions of the US found themselves more deeply ensconced in an immobile status quo imposed by an oligarchy that had been in place for decades. What did change, however, was the image of the US across the globe. US prestige reached an all-time low.

All this highlights the weird relationship US politics now has with the very idea of change. What was once framed as the nation’s historic mission to ameliorate the conditions of humanity by spreading democracy and modernizing the economy (the ideology some call neoliberalism) now could be seen as a cynical tactic for promoting any number of vested interests, all in the name of positive change. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and the 2015 Paris climate accord — two agreements that most of humanity considered vital to the future — the idea of change would always come from the whim of an executive suddenly achieved a legitimacy that no previous president had dared to affirm.

Trumpism appears to have left a serious trace on all forms of political discourse in the US. It has validated cynicism and opportunism in a way that was previously unthinkable. It has modified the expectations of political actors and of the public itself. Although the accumulation of power by the executive has been in the works for some time, Joe Biden’s signing a mountain of executive orders in his first days in office validates the legitimacy of Trump’s innovation.

Americans once believed that a signed contract was law and could not be changed even in changing circumstances. That assumption in US culture appears to have changed.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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How Will Joe Biden Approach Iran?

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The fact that Joe Biden is bringing many of Barack Obama’s staff back to the White House, in particular Wendy Sherman as deputy secretary of state, is what may have buoyed the Qatari foreign minister’s optimism about a renewed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Sherman was the lead US negotiator for the initial nuclear deal with Iran. Her new boss at the State Department will be Antony Blinken, a  of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement. Biden’s designated national security adviser is . Both men are on record as wanting to bring America back into a JCPOA 2.0.

Obama 3

Though Oman played a key role in negotiations with the Iranians in the first deal, other Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) were left out of the loop, which only added to their anxiety that the Americans were being played for suckers by Tehran. This time around, it is to be hoped (in what has been called by some analysts “Obama 3”) that lessons have been learned and there will be consultation with the GCC as new negotiations with Iran get underway.

If that happens, the Bloomberg interviewer asked, would the Qataris be interested in playing a lead role as facilitators this time around? Sheikh Mohammed replied that “we want the accomplishment, we want to see the deal happening. … If Qatar will be asked by the stakeholders to play a role in this, we will be welcoming this idea.” He affirmed that Qatar will support anyone conducting the negotiations because Doha has good relations with both Washington and Tehran: “Iran is our neighbor … they stood with us during the crisis.”

That fact alone may give the Qataris the inside track should the Americans choose to use them as a bridge to the Iranians. And it would be a role that the Saudis, in their efforts to curry favor with the Biden administration while wanting to appear to stand up strongly to Iran, may find useful as well.

Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has already staked out the kingdom’s position. In an he gave just ahead of the rapprochement with Qatar, he said Saudi Arabia was “in favor of dialogue with Iran” as well as “in favor of dialogue between the United States and Iran.” He went on to argue that the Trump administration had been open to dialogue but that it was “Iran that closed the doors to that dialogue.” That, it could be argued, is somewhat disingenuous, since Trump had adamantly refused, as a means of getting the Iranians to the table, to ease sanctions. Indeed, in the waning months of his presidency, he had ramped them .

Prince Faisal, though he called for talks, was clear that there must be “real dialogue” that “addresses significant issues of concern — not just nuclear non-proliferation … but also ballistic missiles and, most importantly, the destabilizing activity … Without addressing Iran’s malign role and Iran’s funding of armed groups and terrorist organizations in the region and its attempts to impose its will by force on other states,” Prince Faisal said, “we are not going to have progress.” In a message intended for the incoming president’s ears, he concluded: “I sincerely hope that the Biden administration will take that into account when it formulates its policy in the region, and I believe they will.”

Time for War

Meanwhile, a conservative Israeli think tank, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), has just released a  that says, forget about dialogue — it’s time for Israel to go to war with Iran. That sentiment is rooted in the author’s belief that the Iranians are hell-bent on securing nuclear weapons. Professor Efraim Inbar, the JISS president, writes that “Iran-Israel relations are essentially a zero-sum game, leaving Israel little choice but to act upon its existential instincts.” Noting numerous strikes by the Israel Defense Forces on Hezbollah in Syria and on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, he argues that Israel is already at war: “Indeed, Israel has decided to wage a low-profile limited war, ‘the campaign between wars,’ to obstruct Iranian attempts to transform Syria and Iraq into missile launching pads.”

Iran, Professor Inbar argues, will play a game of “talk and build” pretending to be serious about meaningful negotiations while building its nuclear capability — a point John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and others from the Trump administration have consistently made. “Essentially,” Inbar writes, “inconclusive talks preserve a status quo, a tense standoff in which Iran can go on uninhibited with its nuclear program. Indeed, bargaining, at which Iranians excel, and temporary concessions postpone diplomatic and economic pressures and, most importantly, preventive military strikes.” His solution is to suggest Israel “strike to pre-empt the return of Iran to the negotiating table.”

And, despite the Abraham Accords, he doesn’t put much stock in Israel’s new friendships in the Gulf. To the contrary, he worries that “as Iran becomes more powerful in the region and the US security umbrella becomes less reliable, reorienting their foreign policy towards Tehran might become more attractive.”

Granted, it is unlikely that Benjamin Netanyahu — preoccupied with keeping his political career alive as a way of avoiding prison — will seize on the professor’s bellicose strategy. That will be a relief, no doubt, to the Gulf states. The last thing they need is a war unleashed by their new Israeli friends right on the doorstep. Still, it points to the huge difficulties President Biden faces in attempting to revive the nuclear deal. His political foes and the right-wing media in America will move quickly to paint him as Tehran’s patsy. Regardless, the first step is to get the Iranians and the Americans around the table. Doha may be just about the best place to do that.

*[This article was originally published by.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post JCPOA 2.0: A Pinch of Hope and a Dose of Reality appeared first on 51�Թ�.

For President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, domestic policy will dominate their time and efforts. Overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, ensuring that newly released vaccines are quickly and effectively administered, and righting a still stressed US economy will be their top priorities in the first year. It is what the American people want and expect. Furthermore, there is America’s worsening and more pernicious longer-term problems: increasing economic inequality, continuing racial injustice and growing political polarization.

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These will be profoundly difficult problems to address successfully, especially as President Biden could face a US Senate controlled by the Republican Party and a thinner Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives.

First, Image Repair

Nevertheless, after four years of an unprecedentedly destructive foreign policy and simply by virtue of the fact he will lead still the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nation, Joe Biden cannot ignore foreign policy. In fact, amidst his formidable domestic challenges, he must confront serious foreign policy challenges vital to America’s interests and to those of its many friends and allies around the world.

We may already have caught a glimpse of how different Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be from Donald Trump’s, considering the first officials named to his senior foreign policy team: Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US ambassador to the UN with cabinet rank, Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, Avril Haines as director of National Intelligence and Katherine Tai as the US trade representative. They are all highly experienced, proven, knowledgeable, principled and committed public servants. Under President Trump, we saw few of those and many more self-interested, self-promoting political hacks and ideologues.

One of the first jobs Biden must tackle is America’s badly damaged reputation around the world. Donald Trump undermined critical alliances, pointlessly insulted and demeaned allies, abandoned international agreements and institutions, embraced autocrats and dictators from Russia to North Korea, discarded traditional free trade principles and turned America’s back on core values of human rights, democracy and rule of law. In short, it was a side of America no one had ever seen, certainly not in the history of the modern presidency. Most profoundly, it raised the question: Who is America?

Joe Biden must try to answer that question, and not just with the eloquent prose of President Barack Obama, under whom he served as vice president. The world expects and will demand to see concrete action, preferably guided by some overarching policy that can show to the world that the United States can still play — and indeed, must play — a leadership role again on the global stage.

There are some decisions that Joe Biden has indicated he will make right out of the starting block when he takes office on January 20. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. Those are relatively easy and straightforward but also very necessary. He is also likely to make clear in his inauguration address that America will return to be the leading voice for democracy, human rights and rule of law in the world, starting first at home but also unafraid to speak in their defense abroad.

Then begins the hard part. One priority he has made clear that his administration will take on immediately is reaffirming American membership in and commitment to its alliances and critical partnerships. These constitute America’s competitive advantage in global affairs and remain the heart of its still formidable soft power in the world. After Trump’s destructive practices, Biden will have to appeal to America’s allies in Europe, e.g., NATO and the EU, and in Asia and the Pacific, like Japan, South Korea, Australia and others. And he’ll have to do it with humility, understanding that under his predecessor, America seemingly abandoned principles that had previously united them all.

China: Work With Allies, Pursue Hard-nosed Diplomacy

China will be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge. On trade, defense, the South China Sea, Taiwan, cybersecurity, human rights and global leadership, China presents a daunting challenge. We should expect his administration to drive a hard bargain with Beijing but to use a very different approach than his predecessor. Pursued smartly, however, he may be surprised by the inherent advantages America still holds. For example, fortifying the alliances and partnerships as previously mentioned will aid his administration in addressing the China challenge. In fact, if he is to succeed on this account, he will need those allies and partners with him at the negotiating table. Another advantage: He will likely have bipartisan support in an otherwise partisan Congress for taking a strong position on China.

Trade is the clearest area where the US can capitalize on its extensive network of allies. China’s most important trading relationships — those with the EU and the East Asian nations — also happen to be America’s closest allies. The most effective approach will be one that joins their efforts with the administration to address China’s aggressive and predatory trade practices. Those range from intellectual property theft to intimidation and threats against foreign businesses to coopting confidential and proprietary techniques, practices and technology. But this approach works only if the new administration can establish that it can be trusted again, and not only on trade. If the US can succeed in its trade negotiations with China, it opens opportunities on other fronts.

The objective must be clear: The US isn’t interested in standing in China’s way as it progresses to superpower status. However, China must understand that it must do so within an international community governed by collaboratively set rules.

Renewed US Global Leadership: Climate and Global Health

Climate and global health are two other priority issues for Biden. He has indicated he will want not only to reestablish America’s commitment to them but also to take the lead. Rejoining the Paris accords won’t be enough. The US must marshal a critical mass of other nations in joining a reinvigorated effort to go beyond the mandates of Paris. In that, he’s likely to garner support from the EU and other developed nations. Appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special envoy on climate change demonstrates Biden’s seriousness about the issue and the intention to take a much-needed lead role on this global existential challenge.

The COVID-19 pandemic raging at home makes it imperative that President-elect Biden make global health security a clear foreign policy priority. If there is one thing Americans have learned from the novel coronavirus, it’s that there is no greater threat to America’s national security and economic prosperity than another pandemic, especially one perhaps more catastrophic than COVID-19. If America is to be better prepared for the next pandemic, so must be the rest of the world.

As he did for climate, Biden may even wish to name a special envoy for global health to begin galvanizing America’s efforts and those of the rest of the world to prepare and coordinate global initiatives for preventing, containing and treating the next pandemic.

Climate and global health present the Biden administration with just the sort of challenge-cum-opportunity to which America was known to rise in the past. They are issues on which it is uniquely positioned to lead by virtue of its power, size, wealth and technological prowess. To reassume the mantle of global leadership, President-elect Biden must lead the global effort to combat climate change and strengthen the international community’s capacity to address pandemics.

In the Middle East, Iran and Then Everything Else

Unlike for the US administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter, the Middle East will not be a top-five priority in 2021. Americans have lost their appetite for inserting themselves into problems that the region’s residents cannot or will not work to resolve themselves. Biden and his foreign policy team recognize this, even as they know they can’t turn their backs on this dangerously volatile region.

But there remains one exception. Iran is a grave problem, perhaps less for the US than for Washington’s allies in the Middle East, most especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. It also constitutes a major challenge to America’s traditionally unflinching support for the Nonproliferation Treaty. Nothing could be more destabilizing in that region than the introduction of nuclear weapons. It will require almost immediate attention from President Biden.

The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” via its punishing sanctions has indeed inflicted enormous economic pain on Iran and its people. But it hasn’t changed Tehran’s behavior. Iran today has begun to reconstitute the nuclear program that had been effectively contained under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated under President Obama in 2015 and then abandoned by Trump in 2018.

The purpose of the sanctions cannot be inflicting pain on the Iranian people, who are not responsible for their government’s policies. The objective of sanctions and an overall policy toward Iran must be to change its behavior. By that measurement, the Trump administration’s pressure campaign has not worked. Iran continues to: develop and build longer-range missiles; support malign behavior through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Shia proxies throughout the region, from Iraq and Yemen to Syria and Lebanon; senselessly threaten Israel; and deny the most basic human rights to its own citizens, most especially women, journalists, perceived political opponents and religious minorities.

Whatever trust President Obama and then-Secretary of State Kerry may have been able to build with the Iranians in reaching the JCPOA has been largely destroyed now. So, short of immediately rejoining that agreement, which would be unwise, face-to-face negotiations between Washington and Tehran will not be in the offing for at least one year.

In fact, to tackle the Iran question, Biden and Blinken must address the failures of the Obama approach. That will mean: (a) turning to America’s P5+1 partners — the UK, France and Germany — to work out a modus operandi for rejoining the JCPOA while simultaneously securing a commitment to negotiate a stronger JCPOA version 2.0; (b) consulting regularly and frequently with key regional allies to ensure their concerns and interests are addressed in any follow-on agreement with Tehran; and, most important, (c) including key congressional members in the negotiation process, at least on the Washington end. The last is most vital because the absence of Congressional support was ultimately Barack Obama and the agreement’s downfall. Any new accord negotiated must have the support of a majority of the Congress if it is to avoid the fate of the JCPOA, even it isn’t submitted for formal approval to the Congress. All of these are sine qua non for successfully addressing the Iranian challenge and securing a durable solution.

While the Iran portfolio remains an urgent priority for Joe Biden, it won’t be one resolved in his first year and perhaps not until well into his second. His administration and the Congress must understand that the US cannot not sanction, bomb, assassinate or otherwise forcibly compel Iran into complying with its norms for behavior. It will take patient, deliberate and determined diplomacy.

Can’t Ignore the Rest

These are likely to be President Biden’s top priorities. But they won’t be his only ones. His administration and the US also face serious challenges from a menacing and malign Russia, an arms control agreement with whom due to expire within weeks of his taking office; still extant terrorism and cybersecurity threats; a wave of autocrats with a full head of steam, from Turkey and Hungary to Venezuela and the Philippines; ill-behaved and irrationally aggressive regional actors vying for preeminence in the Middle East; continuing conflict and humanitarian crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus and elsewhere.

Joe Biden will be the most experienced and knowledgeable president on foreign policy since George H.W. Bush. As such, he surely knows that it is issues like these that can suddenly rise to crisis proportions and take over his foreign policy or even his presidency. So, they won’t be far from his attention. But a clear-eyed view of what is most important will drive Biden toward those highlighted above.

However, there is likely to be a critically important domestic component of the Biden foreign policy agenda. This gets to the Achilles heel of previous administrations’ foreign policies that Donald Trump cleverly exploited. Biden and his administration must be able to convincingly articulate to the American people a foreign policy that they will see as in their interests. That will mean a policy that protects American jobs, addresses threats to climate and the environment, ensures security and offers a promise of a better future.

Crafting a policy that meets these criteria may be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge, especially in view of the historic disconnect between foreign policy and the American people and polarization of the American public exacerbated by four years of Donald Trump. But if this administration is to be successful in confronting and capitalizing on America’s many challenges abroad, it must be able to show that it holds the interests of Americans uppermost — and that they stand behind this policy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The JCPOA was signed in 2015 by the P5+1 group — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — and the Iranians in a diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet today, the agreement is standing on its last legs. US President Donald Trump, who campaigned against the agreement during the 2016 presidential election, has imposed a policy of on Iran in order to force it to negotiate a better deal.

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For the Trump administration, an improved agreement would address Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its expansionist policies in the Middle East — two issues that the Obama administration and the European Union failed to incorporate in the JCPOA. This infuriated US allies in the Middle East, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which in particular has been on the receiving end of Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Gulf.

With the presidential election on November 3, the question of whether US policy toward Iran will change should Biden win the keys to the White House is attracting the attention of pundits and policymakers in the Arab region. 

Joe Biden’s Position on Iran

Biden, who was vice president under the Obama administration, explained in a recent his proposed position regarding Iran. He said, “I have no illusions about the challenges the regime in Iran poses to America’s security interests, to our friends and partners and to [Iran’s] own people.” He listed four key principles as he outlined his approach.

First, he promised that a Biden administration would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Second, he committed himself to rejoin the JCPOA if Iran returns to “strict compliance with the nuclear deal,” and only as “a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” In Biden’s words, these negotiations would aim at strengthening and extending the nuclear deal’s provisions and addressing “other issues of concern.” Third, he made a commitment to “push back against Iran‘s destabilizing activities” in the Middle East, which threaten US allies in the region. He also promised to continue to use “targeted sanctions against Iran‘s human rights abuses, its support for terrorism and ballistic missile program.”

Finally, he said, if the Iranians choose to threaten vital American interests and troops in the region, the US would not hesitate to confront them. Despite this, Biden wrote that he is “ready to walk the path of diplomacy if Iran takes steps to show it is ready too.”

But Will His Policy Be Any Different to Trump’s?

In relation to Saudi Arabia, Biden issued a statement on the second anniversary of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in which he , “Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

Although Biden’s approach is a departure from Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran and with regard to Saudi Arabia in its intervention in Yemen, it is possible that Biden might end up — at least concerning Iran —a�����⾱�Բ� Trump’s same tactics. This is partly because, according to Biden himself, Iran has stockpiled 10 times as much enriched uranium since Trump has been in office. This is further complicated by the fact there is no guarantee that Iran will surrender its stockpiles to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Additionally, Iran has repeatedly declared that it will not negotiate additional provisions to the JCPOA, which is in direct conflict with Biden’s intention to put enforce additional restrictions on Tehran. Moreover, putting pressure on Iran to end its destabilizing regional activities, as Biden has promised, would certainly lead to points of confrontation between the two countries, especially in Iraq and Syria. If any of these scenarios take place, a Biden administration would be forced to impose even tougher sanctions on Iran with the help of EU countries.

Three Key Factors

Biden’s decision to rejoin the JCPOA rests on three issues. The first is the balance of power within Congress between the Republicans and the Democrats. The second is how Iran fits into his overall policy toward China. Finally, the position of the Saudi kingdom and its allies regarding any future agreement with Iran would play a key role.

First, it is well known that members of Congress from both parties resisted then-President Barack Obama’s policy of negotiating with Iran and insisted on reviewing any agreement before the US would ratify it. For this reason, a majority in Congress the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act in 2015, which forced the president to send any agreement he reaches with Iran to the US Congress for review.

When the P5+1 hit a breakthrough with the JCPOA, Obama sent the draft agreement to Congress as per the act, but the nuclear deal was neither approved nor rejected. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly the deal. Yet Republicans in the Senate could the agreement because they did not have a 60-vote majority to move forward with a vote against the JCPOA. In other words, almost half of Congress — which consists of the House and the Senate — were against the Iran deal.

If Biden becomes the 46th US president and decides to rejoin the agreement, he will face the same dilemma as Congress will have to review the JCPOA yet again, a process that will create tension between the president and Congress. Though considering the president needs Congress to pass domestic reforms related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the US economy, Biden would most likely not be in rush to act on Iran.

Second, Biden would link the deal with Iran with his policy toward China. As president, Biden will continue Obama’s policy of redirecting the US military presence from the Middle East and other regions toward East Asia to confront China’s growing influence in the region.

Meanwhile, Beijing has expanded its position in the Gulf where it has established several strategic partnerships, which are essential to connect China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to markets in Europe. With Iran’s of a strategic comprehensive partnership agreement with China in 2016 and its to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Iran is very much part of the BRI.

Thus, a Biden administration will likely tie Iran to its China containment policy. That is to say, any US policy that aims to weaken China will have to incorporate some pressure on the Iranians to be effective, including maintaining existing sanctions on Iran. Further, Iranian ties with China will push the US under Biden’s leadership to strengthen its relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in order to prevent China from extending its influence into the Middle East. The Biden administration cannot do so without taking into consideration the interests of Saudi Arabia, which are linked to the kind of agreement the US may strike with Iran.

Finally, while the US has become self-sufficient in terms of oil supply, the world economy is still reliant on Saudi oil exports. Saudi Arabia is also the heart of the Muslim world, and it maintains control over of global trade that passes through the Red Sea. The kingdom’s significance as a stabilizing factor in the Middle East is also increased with the demise of Syria, Iraq and the domestic troubles in Egypt, not to mention the challenges that Turkey is causing for the US in the region.

Accordingly, a Biden administration cannot afford to turn its back on Saudi interests. Such a policy would force Saudi Arabia to diversify its security, which would undoubtedly include strengthening its relations with China and other US rivals like Russia. This is something the US cannot afford to happen if it wishes to effectively confront its main competitors — China and Russia.

As for Yemen, there is no reason that prevents Saudi Arabia and a Biden administration from reaching an agreement. In 2015, the kingdom intervened in Yemen to prevent Iran from threatening its southern borders. Saudi Arabia wants the war to end sooner rather than later, and it wants the Yemenis to thrive in their own state. However, the Yemen conflict is connected to the Iranian expansionist policies in the Middle East, and Biden’s administration would have to address this in its approach toward Iran.

When adding to these reasons the fact that the conservatives won the Iranian in early 2020 and are poised to win the presidential election in June 2021, it is highly doubtful that Iran will accept a renegotiated nuclear deal with the US.

For all these reasons, returning to the JCPOA is unlikely.

*[51�Թ� is a media of Gulf State Analytics.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The deal, which imposes limitations on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program, was agreed in July 2015 between the Iranians and the P5+1 group — China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — and implemented six months later. The deal was struck when the Obama administration was in the White House following years of negotiations. The JCPOA gave Iran relief from international economic sanctions in return for dismantling major parts of its nuclear program and giving access to its facilities for inspection.

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Yet ever since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in November 2016, the future of the JCPOA has hung in the balance. Trump made it a campaign promise to pull out of the Iran deal. He kept his word and officially withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018, saying the deal is “” and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its interference in the affairs of other countries in the Middle East.

Washington has since reinstated US sanctions on Iran and sought to penalize any nation doing trade with the Iranians, which has led to widespread criticism. In response, Iran has its uranium enrichment at the Fordow nuclear plant, which is banned under the JCPOA.

The events surrounding the Iran deal have seen their ups and downs, but one thing is for sure: The collapse of the JCPOA is in no one’s best interest.

A Rocky Year

Several incidents have marked 2020 as a critical year for Iran. In January, the US assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in Baghdad, which led to a further escalation in tensions. In response, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, , “Severe revenge awaits the criminals.” The Iranians later they would no longer comply with the limits set to uranium enrichment under the nuclear deal.

In July, a fire broke out in Natanz, Iran’s enrichment site. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization claimed the explosion was the result of “,” and officials further stressed that the incident “could slow the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges.” Both the assassination of Soleimani and the explosion in Natanz have rocked the nuclear deal, which is standing on its last legs.

Making Promises and Breaking Them

The JCPOA is not the first international agreement the US has withdrawn from under the Trump administration. In August 2019, the US officially pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an agreement signed by Washington and Moscow in 1987 that sought to eliminate the arsenals of short and intermediate-range missiles of both countries. Russia reciprocated and called the INF Treaty “.” Just months later, in May 2020, the US announced its decision to from the Open Skies Treaty, an accord that allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over dozens of countries.

When it comes to bilateral agreements, the world has experienced challenges with enforcing arms control and nonproliferation agreements, particularly since Trump was elected. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) — which, despite its own , is the last remaining arms control pact between the US and Russia — is one clear example. The fact that Trump wants to strike a with Iran but is quick to pull the trigger at torpedoing international agreements — including the 2015 Paris Climate Accord — does not bode well for building trust with the Iranians.

Considering that US–Iran diplomatic relations are a nonstarter under the Trump administration, the result of the US presidential election on November 3 will be critical. President Trump has to reach a new deal with Iran “within four weeks” if he is reelected. If he wins, his administration would have to reshape its approach toward Iran in a constructive way to meet the timeline he has set. On the other hand, if Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins, his administration would likely rejoin the JCPOA, as well as seek additional concessions from Tehran. In a recent op-ed for CNN, Biden , “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”

Biden served as the vice president under the previous Obama administration, which, together with the P5+1 group, negotiated the JCPOA back in 2015. Therefore, it is safe to say that the future of the nuclear deal might just rest on the outcome of the US election.

A Regional Arms Race

For now, however, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA has weakened the impact of the accord. More importantly, the near-collapse of the deal could have a direct impact on the next Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference in 2021, potentially drawing criticism from non-nuclear-weapon states that may wish to pursue civilian programs of their own.

The JCPOA is not only important for global nonproliferation efforts, but also for stability in the Middle East. The complete failure of the deal would have severe implications. It would make neighboring countries feel less secure. As a result, this would encourage not just states but potentially non-state actors — such as terrorist groups — to focus on developing nuclear weapons. This would lead to an arms race in the geostrategic Middle East.

Developing a civilian nuclear program is a long and expensive process that involves extensive oversight by international bodies. Therefore, while it may be an unlikely scenario, regional states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may think that nuclear weapons are essential for national security due to their rivalry with Iran and start building their own arsenal. The potential collapse of the JCPOA clearly has global ramifications that could be catastrophic for nuclear nonproliferation.

Sanctions on Iran

On August 20, France, Germany and the UK issued a saying they do not support the US request for the UN Security Council to initiate the “snapback mechanism” of the JCPOA, which would reimpose the international sanctions against Iran that were lifted in 2015. As the US is no longer a party to the JCPOA, it has limited influence over its enforcement. Therefore, the Security Council rejected the US move.

The Iranian economy was already fragile before President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, and US-enforced sanctions are further complicating the situation. High , a deep recession and plummeting oil exports are just the tip of the iceberg.

The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) is seen as an important mechanism to organize trade between Germany, France and Britain on the one side, and Iran on the other. INSTEX allows European companies to do business with Iran and bypass US sanctions. On March 31, these three European countries that INSTEX had “successfully concluded its first transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran.”

Although INSTEX can be helpful for Iran, US sanctions have dealt a fatal blow to the country’s economy. According to the , Iran’s GDP “contracted by 7.6% in the first 9 months of 2019/20 (April-December 2019),” mostly due to a 37% drop in the oil sector.

For the US, sanctions are a strategic way to deter Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Yet they can also be counterproductive. Iran is aware of the strategic benefit the JCPOA has for other states. This includes global and regional security. In this regard, the joint statement on upholding the nuclear deal during the recent meeting in Vienna came as no surprise. But if multilateral sanctions are reimposed, that could be the final straw for Iran. This may lead the Iranians to walk away from the JCPOA and up the game with its nuclear program.

Nuclear Nonproliferation

With all of this in mind, it is vital that the remaining parties to the JCPOA continue with constructive dialogue to try to uphold the agreement. Everyone benefits from the deal, and its success depends on each side’s fulfillment of their responsibilities and commitments, particularly Iran’s full compliance.

Most importantly, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is necessary for the future of nuclear nonproliferation. If the deal collapses, then the world enters uncharted territory.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Containment advocates argue that North Korea has never truly been squeezed hard enough to force capitulation. Engagement advocates counter that serious tit-for-tat negotiations have never tested North Korea’s willingness to freeze or shut down its nuclear program in exchange for good-faith incentives. Both camps maintain that some additional variable — failure of leadership, bureaucratic inertia, the perfidy of North Korea, the resistance of the US Congress, the ambivalence of China — has undermined the integrity of the containment or the engagement approach. Politics and/or geopolitics, in other words, continually interfere with the workings of a perfectly good plan.

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There is a third category of options: try something new and different. Into this category falls a regional proposal like a nuclear-weapon-free zone for Northeast Asia. Unfortunately, it remains as marginal to the debate today as it was when it was first proposed. Even though the rationale for such a zone has arguably grown stronger, the political will in the principal capitals — Washington, Pyongyang, Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul — is lacking. Not surprisingly, the greatest interest in this proposal has come from Mongolia, a country that has not been central to the nuclear politics of the region.

But significant changes are on the horizon. The coronavirus pandemic poses a new, collective threat to the region. China is emerging from this crisis in a stronger, and more aggressively nationalist, position. The United States may well have new leadership in 2021, and its strategic thinking about the region is evolving regardless of who occupies the White House. The surprising resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September has shaken up Japanese politics, while the engagement-friendly Moon Jae-in administration has a more powerful parliamentary majority in South Korea after the 2020 elections.

Ordinarily, such changes would merely shift the needle slightly toward one of the status quo positions, probably a renewal of tit-for-tat negotiations — between the US and North Korea on the one hand and North Korea and South Korea on the other — within a narrow spectrum of options. However, frustration over several decades of failed engagement and containment strategies could push pundits and policymakers to explore the third category of options, including a nuclear-weapon-free zone.

The State of Play in Washington

The election of US President Donald Trump in 2016 introduced a new dynamic into nuclear politics in Northeast Asia in three ways. Trump was interested in demonstrating his reputed negotiating skills in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, a stand-off that frustrated his predecessor, Barack Obama. The new president showed little interest in shoring up traditional alliances, such as the military pacts with Japan and South Korea. And he demonstrated a marked indifference to non-proliferation norms, suggesting at one point that the US should remove the nuclear umbrella from Japan and South Korea and allow the two countries to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

Despite three direct encounters between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as well as repeated US attempts to extract more money in host-nation support from Tokyo and Seoul, the US president has not substantially changed the status quo in the region. North Korea has  to its nuclear deterrent. Japan and South Korea have bristled at Trump’s extreme burden-sharing demands. Relations between the United States and China have significantly worsened. But the US nuclear umbrella remains in place, as does the US alliance system. As a recent Stimson Center  notes, the stalemate on the Korean Peninsula persists and will likely to continue despite the coronavirus.

Over the last six to nine months, US pundits have churned out variations of their past positions, updated to reflect Trump’s erratic policies, Kim’s hardening stance and the outbreak of the coronavirus. Trump’s own vacillations between a “fire-and-fury” threat of military response and his seeming willingness to negotiate a comprehensive deal personally with Kim have provided hope and concern to both sides of the debate.

Containment advocates have argued, for instance, that the US and its allies haven’t really tried to squeeze North Korea. Some presidents have crafted what they have called campaigns of maximum pressure. But Bradley Bowman and David Maxell of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies have argued that what is needed is “” in which all tools of national power, including diplomacy, military, cyber, sanctions and information and influence activities, are brought to bear on Pyongyang.

Other conservative think tanks have offered variants of this. “There is no diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis—or to be a little more precise, no solution acceptable to Pyongyang that also involves security for the United States and her allies,”  Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. “Thus the only viable Western option for dealing with the North Korean nuclear menace is ‘threat reduction’—a concerted and unremitting project to diminish the regime’s killing force materially by unilateral outside action, without Kim Jong Un’s assent.” Focusing on the more immediate, COVID-19 era,  of the Heritage Foundation has put it simply: no relaxation of sanctions in exchange for a “partial, flawed agreement.”

Engagement advocates, meanwhile, argue that the US and its allies haven’t really tried to negotiate properly. While those favoring containment propose different combinations of sticks, those favoring engagement offer different combinations of carrots. Most recommendations boil down to stepping away from an all-or-nothing approach and offering some partial sanctions relief for a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, as both the Carnegie Endowment’s  and  of the Brookings Institution argues.

Often, as with  of the Center for American Progress, there’s a plea to repairing U.S. alliances or, as with  of the Center for a New American Security, an additional realpolitik rationale, in their case a bid to deny China influence over North Korea. Sanctions relief for a freeze is possibly feasible, Sue Mi Terry of the Center for Strategic and International Studies , but Trump took this option off the table through his ham-fisted negotiating style.

Few in the Washington advocacy community think it is useful to step away from this tug-of-war to propose something new.  of the Quincy Institute hews to the engagement line but puts a few more carrots into the mix, not only partial sanctions relief but also declaring an end to the Korean War and establishing a liaison office in Pyongyang in return for North Korea dismantling some of its nuclear facilities over the course of one year.

Perhaps the most radical suggestion comes from the Cato Institute, where Doug Bandow  that normalizing relations with Pyongyang should precede further negotiations and thus transform the entire diplomatic framework. I have made a , referencing the US-China deal of the Richard Nixon era.

What has been noticeably absent from discussions has been a regional approach that involves all parties. For a while in the mid-2000s, the “six-party talks” arrangement gained traction, even in the US where the Bush administration was eager to avoid one-on-one negotiations with North Korea. A nuclear-weapon-free zone could have flowed out of such a process. But it has largely faded from the diplomatic agenda.

What would it take to get such an idea back on the agenda?

Zoning Out

A nuclear-weapon-free zone for Northeast Asia has been on the drawing board since 1972, at least in US arms control circles. Hiro Umebayashi, the Japanese arms control expert, has delineated perhaps the most detailed  of the proposal.

In his  to inject a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) proposal into the moribund six-party talks, Morton Halperin argued that the prospect of either or both Japan and South Korea going nuclear in response to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions made it imperative to conclude a comprehensive approach to regional security. Such a zone was only one of six elements of this comprehensive arrangement, which also included ending the state of war, turning the six-party talks into a permanent regional security council, a mutual declaration of no hostile intent, provision of nuclear and other energy sources to North Korea and the removal of sanctions.

The zone, according to most versions, would cover North Korea, South Korea and Japan. The United States, China and Russia would pledge not to store nuclear weapons in the zone. The US would maintain its nuclear umbrella over both its military allies but with some modification.

In 2016, South Korean security expert Moon Chung-in  in light of North Korea’s expansion of its nuclear program. He recommended that a “first step toward establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone would be for the six parties to request that the UN secretary-general and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs convene an expert meeting to examine the concept behind the zone. Parallel efforts could be conducted by civil society organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.”

Most recently, Mongolia has taken the lead in pushing the idea at the United Nations as well as the civil society level. Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan of the NGO Blue Banner acknowledges the difficulties of pushing forward a nuclear-weapon-free zone at a time when North Korea is unlikely to negotiate away its nuclear program simply as part of a region-wide non-proliferation strategy. Rather, he  as a first step a declaration of “non-nuclear deterrence” from all the parties which “would contribute to greater predictability and stability and hence would avert a possible uncontrollable chain reaction leading to the regional nuclear arms race. This would also lead to ‘denuclearizing’ regional war planning and military exercises.”

Toby Dalton of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, one of the few policy analysts in Washington to incorporate a nuclear-weapon-free zone into his analysis, suggests that the NWFZ can serve a useful function in negotiations as a commonly agreed-upon endpoint. To reach this endpoint using Halperin’s model, Dalton , requires the substitute of “cooperative security” for the current nuclear deterrence model.

Such a transformation would, in some sense, provide a new language for the negotiations so that the two sides would have a better chance of not talking past one another. A nuclear-weapon-free zone then becomes like a more advanced text that can only be read and understood by the participants once they’ve gone through the earlier language training in “cooperative security.” Importantly, Dalton sees this process as Korean-led rather than primarily a negotiated calibration of US-North Korean relations, which is also a departure from most Washington analyses.

Assessing the Likelihood

The six-party framework no longer exists. Mongolia has been a valuable diplomatic partner in many regional initiatives in Northeast Asia, but it doesn’t have the kind of convening power necessary to overcome the deep ideological divides and profound imbalances of power in the region. “Cooperative security” is indeed a powerful language to substitute for deterrence, and a Korea-led process is indispensable. But deterrence remains a deeply rooted status quo, and the two Koreas are too far apart to lead on anything at the moment.

On top of all this, the US Senate has never been very enthusiastic about nuclear-weapon-free zones. It ratified the Latin American zone during the Ronald Reagan years but didn’t  on the protocols connected to the African, Central Asian and South Pacific zones that the Obama administration submitted. The United States has not signed the protocol recognizing the Southeast Asian zone.

It would seem, on the face of it, that there is no foundation upon which to place a Northeast Asia nuclear-weapons-free zone. Still, here are some hopeful signs.

First, on the US side, the election in November could put Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the White House, where he would likely advance the (albeit conflicted) disarmament agenda of Barack Obama. Moreover, a shift of the Senate to a Democratic majority could provide a historic opportunity to move forward on a number of stalled arms control and disarmament initiatives.

An intensifying conflict with China, which has  among US policymakers and pundits, mitigates any optimism about the United States participating in regional threat reduction. On the other hand, an evolution in US strategic posture in the region away from what the Pentagon describes as a “targetable footprint” — most recently evidenced by the removal of  from Guam — anticipates the kind of US pullback that could support a future nuclear-weapon-free zone.

Second, neither Japan nor South Korea has pushed ahead with a program to acquire nuclear weapons, despite North Korea’s advanced nuclear status. The current leadership in Japan precludes any serious commitment to regional threat reduction much less a shift to cooperative security. However, the current government of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga enjoyed an initial post-inauguration surge of support, but an election between now and October 2021 could nudge the country in a very different direction.

Thanks to the Moon Jae-in government in Seoul, South Korea is already the most amenable to regional threat reduction, but it has been cursed by a lack of partners. That may change with elections in Washington and Tokyo, which could represent the “disruption and realignment” that Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations  is necessary for any change of status on the Korean peninsula.

In the 2000s, China supported turning the six-party talks into an institutional framework for addressing regional security. Since then, President Xi Jinping has presided over a more assertive and strident expansion of Chinese influence in practically all directions. Closer to home, Beijing has mended fences with Seoul, its relationship with North Korea remains vexed and it continues to eye Japan with suspicion.

As Cho Kyung-Hwan , however, a multilateral framework in Northeast Asia still makes sense for Beijing, for it “believes that the framework could reduce regional suspicion of China’s hegemony, deter Japan’s military buildup, and lessen US military deployment and the chances of US intervention in the region.”

North Korea remains the real question mark. Now that he has a credible nuclear deterrent, Kim Jong Un has focused on improving the country’s economic performance. A reduction of sanctions and a diminution of military threat are certainly on the North Korean leader’s agenda and, as in the past, could motivate a series of protracted, step-by-step negotiations on sanctions relief for steps toward nuclear disarmament. But Pyongyang will not likely waste time on regional negotiations — predicated on cooperative security and with a nuclear-weapon-free zone as an agreed-upon endpoint — without some concrete, immediate benefits.

Given North Korea’s pragmatism in this regard, a reframing is necessary, and COVID-19 points in the right direction. The current pandemic is a potent reminder that trans-border problems require collective, cooperative action. Regional environmental problems, and the effects of climate change more generally, represent an even larger challenge.

In the spirit of Dalton’s reframing, it is critical to view challenges such as the pandemic and climate change not simply as narrow environmental or health challenges but as security problems under the heading of “human security.” Establishing a Northeast Asia multilateral framework for addressing these issues under such a rubric would bring countries to the table to discuss actionable problems in a technical fashion. It would also, necessarily, involve non-political experts and NGO advocacy groups. And it could provide the immediate benefits — such as scientific cooperation and resource-sharing — that North Korea looks for in international initiatives. Reducing the risk of pandemic infections in North Korea and maintaining the country’s low rate of carbon emissions would also represent significant benefits for the region as a whole.

Once mechanisms and institutions of concrete cooperation have been established and once a measure of trust has been created, such a “human security” reframing could ultimately incorporate parallel discussions of more traditional security questions, including nuclear weapons, at which point Dalton’s recommendations would kick in. In this way, the mutually-agreed-upon endpoint of a nuclear-weapon-free zone can be approached not directly but in a sideways manner.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has adjusted its doomsday clock to provide humanity with an expert estimate of just how close all of us are to an apocalyptic “midnight” — that is, nuclear annihilation.

A century ago, there was, of course, no need for such a measure. Back then, the  ever caused by humans had likely occurred in Halifax, Canada, in 1917, when a  collided with another vessel in that city’s harbor. That tragic blast killed nearly 2,000 people, wounded another 9,000 and left 6,000 homeless, but it didn’t imperil the planet. The largest explosions after that occurred on July 16, 1945, in a test of a new type of weapon, an atomic bomb, in  and then on August 6, 1945, when the United States unleashed such a bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Since then, our species has been precariously perched at the edge of auto-extermination.

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No one knows precisely how many people were killed by the world’s first nuclear attack. Around , nearly all of them civilians, were vaporized, crushed, burned or irradiated to death almost immediately. Another 50,000 probably died soon after. As many as  were dead, many from radiation sickness, by the end of the year. (An atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki, three days later, is thought to have killed as many as 70,000.)

In the wake of the first nuclear attack, little was clear. “What happened at Hiroshima is not yet known,” the New York Times  on that August 7, and the US government sought to keep it that way, portraying nuclear weapons as nothing more than super-charged conventional munitions, while downplaying the horrifying effects of radiation. Despite the  of several reporters just after the blast, it �ɲ�����’t until a year later that Americans — and then the rest of the world — began to truly grasp the effects of such new weaponry and what it would mean for humanity from that moment onward.

We know about what happened at Hiroshima largely thanks to one man, John Hersey. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and former correspondent for Time and Life magazines. He had covered World War II in Europe and the Pacific, where he was commended by the of the Navy for helping evacuate wounded American troops on the Japanese-held island of Guadalcanal. And we now know just how Hersey got the story of Hiroshima — a 30,000-word reportorial  that appeared in the August 1946 issue of the New Yorker magazine, describing the experiences of six survivors of that atomic blast — thanks to a meticulously researched and elegantly written new by Lesley Blume, “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World.”

Only the Essentials

When I pack up my bags for a war zone, I carry what I consider to be the essentials for someone reporting on an armed conflict. A water bottle with a built-in filter. Trauma packs with a blood-clotting agent. A first-aid kit. A multitool. A satellite phone. Sometimes I forgo one or more of these items, but there’s always been a single, solitary staple, a necessity whose appearance has changed over the years, but whose presence in my rucksack has not.

Once, this item was intact, almost pristine. But after the better part of a decade covering conflicts in , the ,  and , it’s a complete wreck. Still, I carry it. In part, it’s become (and I’m only slightly embarrassed to say it) something of a talisman for me. But mostly, it’s because what’s between the figurative covers of that now-coverless, thoroughly mutilated copy of John Hersey’s “” — the New Yorker article in paperback form — is as terrifyingly brilliant as the day I bought it at the Strand bookstore in New York City for 48 cents.

I know “Hiroshima” well. I’ve read it cover-to-cover dozens of times. Or sometimes on a plane or a helicopter or a river barge, in a hotel room or sitting by the side of a road, I’ll flip it open and take in a random 10 or 20 pages. I always marveled at how skillfully Hersey constructed the narrative with overlapping personal accounts that make the horrific handiwork of that weapon with the power of the gods accessible on a human level; how he explained something new to this world, atomic terror, in terms that readers could immediately grasp; how he translated destruction on a previously unimaginable scale into a cautionary tale as old as the genre itself, but with an urgency that hasn’t faded or been matched. I simply never knew how he did it until Lesley Blume pulled back the curtain.

“Fallout,” which was published in August — the 75th anniversary of America’s attack on Hiroshima — offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of just how Hersey and William Shawn, then the managing editor of the New Yorker, were able to truly break the story of an attack that had been covered on the front pages of the world’s leading newspapers a year earlier and, in the process, produced one of the all-time great pieces of journalism. It’s an important reminder that the biggest stories may be hiding in plain sight; that breaking news coverage is essential but may not convey the full magnitude of an event; and that a writer may be far better served by laying out a detailed, chronological account in spartan prose, even when the story is so horrific it seems to demand a polemic.

Hersey ���𲵾��Բ�&�Բ�����;“Hiroshima” in an understated fashion, noting exactly what each of the six survivors he chronicles was doing at the moment their lives changed forever. “Not everyone could comprehend how the atomic bomb worked or visualize an all-out, end-of-days nuclear world war,” Blume observes. “But practically anyone could comprehend a story about a handful of regular people — mothers, fathers, grade school children, doctors, clerks — going about their daily routines when catastrophe struck.”

As she points out, Hersey’s authorial voice is never raised and so the atomic horrors — victims whose eyeballs had melted and run down their cheeks, others whose skin hung from their bodies or slipped off their hands  — speak for themselves. It’s a feat made all the more astonishing when one considers, as Blume reveals, that its author, who had witnessed combat and widespread devastation from conventional bombing during World War II, was so terrified and tormented by what he saw in Hiroshima months after the attack that he feared he would be unable to complete his assignment.

Incredibly, Hersey got the story of Hiroshima with official sanction, reporting under the scrutiny of the office of the supreme commander for the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, the head of the American occupation of defeated Japan. His prior reportage on the US military, including a book focused on MacArthur that he later called “too adulatory,” helped secure his access. More amazing still, the New Yorker — fearing possible repercussions under the recently passed Atomic Energy Act — submitted a final draft of the article for review to Lieutenant General Lesley Groves, who had overseen the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, served as its chief booster and went so far as to claim that radiation poisoning “is a very pleasant way to die.”

Whatever concessions the New Yorker may have made to him have been lost in the sands of time, but Groves did sign off on the article, overlooking, as Blume notes, “Hersey’s most unsettling revelations: the fact that the United States had unleashed destruction and suffering upon a largely civilian population on a scale unprecedented in human history and then tried to cover up the human cost of its new weapon.”

The impact on the US government would be swift. The article was a sensation and immediately lauded as the best reporting to come out of World War II. It quickly became one of the most reprinted news pieces of all time and led to widespread reappraisals by newspapers and readers alike of just what America had done to Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also managed to shine a remarkably bright light on the perils of nuclear weapons, writ large. “Hersey’s story,” as Blume astutely notes, “was the first truly effective, internationally heeded warning about the existential threat that nuclear arms posed to civilization.”

Wanted: A Hersey for Our Time

It’s been 74 years since Hiroshima hit the newsstands. A Cold War and nuclear arms race followed as those weapons spread across the planet. And this January, as a devastating pandemic was beginning to follow suit, all of us found ourselves just  from total annihilation due to the plethora of nuclear weapons on this earth, failures of American-Russian cooperation on arms control and disarmament, the Trump administration’s trashing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and America’s efforts to  and  yet more advanced nukes, as well as two other factors that have sped up that apocalyptic doomsday clock: climate change and cyber-based disinformation.

The latter, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is corrupting our “information ecosphere,” undermining democracy as well as trust among nations and so creating hair-trigger conditions in international relations. The former is transforming the planet’s actual ecosystem and placing humanity in another kind of ultimate peril. “Dangerous rivalry and hostility among the superpowers increases the likelihood of nuclear blunder,” former California Governor Jerry Brown, the executive chair of the Bulletin,  earlier this year. “Climate change just compounds the crisis. If there’s ever a time to wake up, it’s now.”

Over the last three-plus years, however, President Donald Trump has seemingly threatened at least three nations with nuclear annihilation, including a US ally. In addition to menacing North Korea with the possibility of unleashing “” and his talk of ushering in “” of Iran, he even claimed to have “plans” to exterminate most of the population of Afghanistan. The “” he suggested employing could kill an estimated 20 or more Afghans, almost all of them civilians. Hersey, who died in 1993 at the age of 78, wouldn’t have had a moment’s doubt about what he meant.

Trump’s nuclear threats may never come to fruition, but his administration, while putting significant  into deep-sixing nuclear , has also more than done its part to accelerate climate change, thinning rules designed to keep the planet as habitable as possible for humans. A recent New York Times analysis, for example, tallied almost  environmental rules and regulations — governing planet-warming carbon dioxide and methane emissions, clean air, water and toxic chemicals — that have been rescinded, reversed or revoked, with more than 30 rollbacks still in progress.

President Trump has not, however, been a total outlier when it comes to promoting environmental degradation. American presidents have been presiding over the destruction of the natural environment since the founding of the republic. Signed into law in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, the Homestead Act, for instance, transformed countless American lives, providing  for the masses. But it also transferred  of wilderness, or 10% of the United States, into private hands for “improvements.”

More recently,  launched attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency through deregulation and budget cuts in the 1980s, while George W. Bush’s administration worked to undermine  in the 2000s, specifically through the denial of anthropogenic climate change. The difference, of course, was that Lincoln couldn’t have conceptualized the effects of global warming (even if the first study of the “” was published during his lifetime), whereas the science was already clear enough in the Reagan and Bush years, and brutally self-apparent in the age of Trump, as each of them pursued policies that would push us precious seconds closer to Armageddon.

The tale of how John Hersey got his story is a great triumph of Lesley Blume’s “Fallout,” but what came after may be an even more compelling facet of the book. Hersey gave the US an image problem — and far worse. “The transition from global savior to genocidal superpower was an unwelcome reversal,” Blume observes. Worse yet for the US government, the article left many Americans reevaluating their country and themselves. It’s beyond rare for a journalist to prompt true soul-searching or provide a moral mirror for a nation. In an interview in his later years, Hersey, who generally avoided publicity, suggested that the testimony of survivors of the atomic blasts — like those he spotlighted — had helped to prevent nuclear war.

“We know what an atomic apocalypse would look like because John Hersey showed us,” writes Blume. Unfortunately, while there have been many noteworthy, powerful works on climate change, we’re still waiting for the one that packs the punch of “Hiroshima.” And so, humanity awaits that once-in-a-century article, as nuclear weapons, climate change, and cyber-based disinformation keep us just 100 clicks short of doomsday.

Hersey provided a template. Blume has lifted the veil on how he did it. Now, someone needs to step up and write the world-changing piece of reportage that will shock our consciences and provide a little more breathing room between this vanishing moment and our ever-looming midnight.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The UAE’s Deal With Israel Is a Sham

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The Trump administration is now scrambling to force a “” in order to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran. As per the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if the Iranians violate the terms of the agreement, sanctions can be reintroduced. Yet Donald Trump, the US president, unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and has no standing to try to enforce its provisions. This latest attempt will also founder, further underlining the failure of Trump’s Middle Eastern adventure.

“Maximum Pressure“

Since 2017, Trump has set out to destroy the regime in Iran and, for this, he has had the support — indeed the encouragement — of Gulf Arab states and Israel but no one else. The rest of the world wants to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Gulf by binding Iran to a permanent agreement to put its nuclear activities under an intrusive inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The purpose of the JCPOA was to make this happen. 

Trump’s policy of putting “maximum pressure” on Iran has caused unemployment, inflation, shortages of medicines and a near-collapse of the Iranian rial, but it has not toppled the regime, nor brought about its surrender. US pressure has united Iranians against America’s bullying, encouraged a resumption of some nuclear activity and pushed Iran further into the arms of Russia and China.

It has also led to the Iranians firing missiles at Saudi and Emirati oil refineries and tankers in 2019 as a demonstration of the potential costs of an all-out assault on Iran. The Gulf states and the US blinked and didn’t respond to these strikes. The US has stepped back from threats of a full-scale attack — a further sign of the Trump administration’s muddled thinking.

The JCPOA is on life support, but it is not yet dead. If Joe Biden is elected as president in November, rejoins the nuclear pact — which was negotiated under the Obama administration that Biden served as vice president in — and lifts unilateral US sanctions, then Iran will cooperate. This is the strongest signal Iran has been sending and which all the other members of the UN Security Council have heard. Iran has also been sending this message through a multitude of back channels to the Gulf Arab states and even the US. But Trump refuses to listen.

So, who does Trump listen to? Not his NATO allies, whom he prefers to insult and threaten. And not the strong bench of Middle Eastern scholars, diplomats and businessman who have spent the last 75 years building US influence and prestige in the region. Trump dismisses this group as the “deep state.”

Instead, the president listens to the Gulf despots who fear Iran will undermine their power and to whom he can sell arms. He also listens to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli hawks who paint Iran as the antichrist that is bent on the destruction of Israel. 

Lack of Strategy

Trump, the narcissist, believes that he is right and the rest of the thinking world is wrong. His announcement of the UAE’s diplomatic pact with Israel — a public acknowledgment of a comprehensive relationship that already existed — was a public relations stunt to try show that his Gulf policies are working. National Security Adviser Richard O’Brien’s call for a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump was an added embarrassment.  

The net result of Trump’s multiple Middle Eastern failures is that Syria has been partitioned between Turkish, Iranian and Russian interests, Iraq is firmly in the Iranian camp, Yemen is a humanitarian disaster, Libya is in the midst of a civil war where the US has no say whatsoever, Egypt is run by an unpopular military dictator whose grip is threatened by economic disaster, Lebanon is a failed state, and Saudi Arabia is ruled by a man who assassinates his enemies.

Trump’s lack of strategy, absence of moral compass and failure of leadership have damaged America’s prestige and influence enormously. US dominance in the region may never recover.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Non-state actors represent a critical challenge in this regard. Encrypted communication channels ensure that discussions between buyers and sellers are protected from intelligence agencies, while a globalized economy means a relatively easy movement of goods and services once an agreement is made. Recognizing the factors contributing to their clandestine operations enables us to derive lessons and measures to prevent new actors from emerging and to more effectively crack down on the ones currently operating.

The Network

One of the most notorious groups to have contributed to nuclear proliferation is the Abdul Qadeer Khan Network. , a Pakistani metallurgist and nuclear scientist trained in Belgium, founded the network in the mid-1980s. The organization provided states with nuclear-related equipment, technologies and materials. Some of its clientele included Iran, North Korea and Libya. While the network’s efforts encompassed nuclear proliferation, the factors facilitating its activities apply to their biological and chemical variants.

Tracing Abdul Qadeer Khan Network’s history presents four factors that account for its long-lived operational capacity. First, Khan successfully stole centrifugal designs while working in the Netherlands in the early 1970s. Then, in 1974, after offering his services to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto following India’s nuclear test, he departed for Pakistan.

There, Khan worked at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission before founding the Engineering Research Laboratory in 1976. By introducing centrifuge designs stolen from his time in the Netherlands and outmaneuvering export controls to acquire nuclear-related equipment and technologies, Khan played a critical role in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program’s early efforts. The business contacts established while evading nuclear-related export controls constituted the core of Khan’s network, which was independent from the Pakistani government and security services. It was, effectively, a one-man show ran by Khan, who controlled all the moving parts.

As Gordon Corera describes in his , “Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network,” Pakistan encouraged Khan’s domestic nuclear proliferation efforts because Islamabad wanted a nuclear bomb. It is not hard to see why Pakistan was actively looking to build a bomb considering the repeated wars with India in 1947, 1965 and 1971. Pakistan lost more than the third India-Pakistan War: It also lost East Pakistan due to a local rebellion supported by India, which resulted in Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.

A globalized economy was integral to the network’s efforts. It enabled the organization to effectively circumvent established controls and regimes by presenting a façade. One way was to use a shell company within a shell company when looking to procure a piece of equipment one, two or even three stages down the technology chain of which a product is controlled. In doing so, entities operating on the network’s behest successfully concealed the intent of their purchase, with Khan eventually obtaining the desired product, albeit with some delays.

With the network up and running, Khan commercialized his efforts and operated a nuclear clearinghouse for bidders. Whether customers required designs, materials or assistance, he was willing to provide it all. And indeed provide he did, such as his supply of technical and material to Libya’s nuclear weapons program throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Pakistani officials were complicit in the network’s activities too; to what extent this was official policy or individual political entrepreneurship is unclear. A letter dated 1998 and released by Khan himself states that he $3 million from North Korea to Pakistani military officials in exchange for centrifuges and technical expertise that provided North Korea with uranium enrichment capabilities.

The network helped Iran too by, firstly, used Pakistani centrifuges in 1987 and then introducing Tehran officials to suppliers to help them develop technological competency. This was no small-scale enterprise.

Policy Recommendations

This raises the critical question of what measures states can implement to prevent future actors from procuring weapons of mass destruction, particularly when it comes to their biological variants. Three stand out from a US-centric perspective. The most immediate one is the importance of reinforcing information and reconnaissance efforts around the principal targets and suspected proliferators.

Second, states pursue nuclear weapons primarily to deter a threat, and non-state actors are more than willing to facilitate this. With its diplomatic and military might, the United States and other regional players can facilitate a resolution of these security concerns and perceptions of insecurity, thereby addressing the initial motive for pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, there is the commercial consideration. As the largest economy in the world, proliferators can expect to find all the required products in the United States. A recent prominent is how American-based persons and companies used their local access and contacts to provide sanctioned persons and Iranian government agencies with prohibited technologies, such as high-tech microelectronics and power supplies used in military and nuclear energy systems.

The existing US sanctions regime should discourage individuals and corporations from engaging with sanctioned entities participating in clandestine weapons proliferation. Sanctions prohibit American-based entities from commercially engaging with a sanctioned person. As the case above demonstrates, violating sanctions leads to imprisonment and asset seizure. But sanctions are only an effective deterrent if non-state actors want to maintain access to the American marketplace. The size of the American nuclear black market is unclear as no systematic study has sought to measure it. However, it is present. Essentially, risk-indifferent actors undeterred by sanctions and whose guiding objective is to facilitate the acquisition of a weapon of mass destruction must simply be caught.

In contrast, risk-averse operatives hoping to maintain their operations and find comparable nuclear-related technologies and equipment in other markets can be discouraged from maintaining their illicit activities. One way would be to bring in other states and develop a joint secondary sanctions regime. If, for example, the United States and China established such a project, then an actor sanctioned by the United States would be similarly sanctioned by China and would be unable to operate in both American and Chinese markets.

There are positive and negative aspects to consider. On the one hand, it would raise the costs for risk-averse operatives, thus reducing the overall number participating in the proliferation process. On the other, it may equally push buyers and sellers to relocate to other countries entirely and deprive the US of domestic oversight. One way around this is through joint-intelligence task forces and intelligence sharing among cooperating states, economic incentives for those on the fence and stringent monitoring and surveillance for those who show no interest in surveilling clandestine actors. Cracking down on proliferation networks is a constant struggle. Whether this initiative is pursued ultimately depends on whether the United States can rely on partner states to cooperate and whether it can effectively maintain surveillance efforts beyond its borders.

The case of the Abdul Qadeer Khan Network provides valuable lessons to combat the role of non-state actors in WMD proliferation. The CIA, alongside Dutch intelligence, was closely the network’s activities and most likely shared this information with the other spy agencies comprising the Five Eyes — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In 2004, Pakistan relented to American pressure and cracked down on Khan, forcing a public confession and placing him under house arrest. Without its linchpin, the network eroded. Now, 16 years later, the international community continues to deal with his legacy in the form of Pakistan’s, Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

Although the controlled substance differs between nuclear and biological WMDs, the rationale and techniques deployed are similar. While reinforcing surveillance around suspected persons and alleviating a state’s security concerns require credible intelligence and an individual or an organization to monitor, states can proactively pursue a multilateral secondary sanctions regime.

A global problem of this magnitude requires a comprehensive and global response. Concentrating resources to counteract proliferation and black market activity in any one country will simply spur non-state actors to operate in other territories. What is needed, then, is for states to pursue non-proliferation as a single, interwoven mesh to remove the prospects of a non-state actor facilitating a WMD. The international community may recover from the current COVID-19 crisis, albeit with significant costs and a substantially altered international terrain. It should do its best to avoid another such crisis, especially one manufactured intentionally.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Mother of All War Crimes

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The case for the defense rests on two claims. First, the demonstration of American nuclear capabilities heralded in a period of stability, which quite likely saved Western Europe’s nations from being overrun and conquered by the Soviet Union and subjected to its rule. Second, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far from exceptional as war crimes go, if indeed the bombing of the two cities was a war crime at all.

Balance of Terror

In my younger years, in a very different world, I served for a couple of years in the German air force. I never flew a plane. I spent most of my time on duty in a tower close to the border to what at the time was the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic (CSSR), a member of the Warsaw Pact and a satellite of the Soviet Union. We did electronic surveyance of the CSSR airspace, following Czech and Slovakian fighter planes as they performed their exercises as best as they could (more often than not they couldn’t, lacking basic motivation). It was a tedious job, boring as hell, particularly when the weather was bad and the pilots were grounded.

Excitement, however, surged once a month, when we waited for the arrival of Russian long-range bombers. They took off from Minsk in what at the time was the capital of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Their mission: attack the towers along the West German border with the CSSR and the German Democratic Republic. We saw them coming, small dots on our radar screens. When they were in front of our tower, there was a small red blip, a fleeting flicker, and we knew if this had been der Ernstfall — an actual real-life attack — we would all be dead, gone up in smoke in a small nuclear mushroom.

At the time, we did not think much of what had just happened. It was part of a game, along the lines of MAD magazine’s “” — inane, a waste of time, and somehow not very real. It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the regime in Prague and the unraveling of the Soviet empire that we learned that the game had been much more serious and potentially deadly than what we suspected. There were plans on the other side of the border to overrun West Germany, conquer Western Europe and subject it to Soviet rule. Among the was a nuclear attack on Bonn, West Germany’s sleepy capital, designed to decapitate West Germany’s political elite.

What prevented the Soviets and their toadies from carrying out their plans was not human compassion but a realist assessment of the distribution of military forces and the resolve of the Western allies to use them. At the time, this was called MAD — mutually assured destruction. It was grounded in the notion that any attack on the part of the Soviets would immediately trigger a full response of Western nuclear forces, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Soviet Union. The leadership in Moscow was fully aware of this logic. They did not like this “balance of terror,” but they ultimately submitted to its logic. Others, by the way, did not.

Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s long-term foreign minister, in his memoirs that at one time, Chinese leader Mao Zedong tried to get the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, arguing that “his country could survive a nuclear war, even if it lost 300 million people, and finish off the capitalists with conventional weapons,” thus guaranteeing the triumph of communism. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets were not convinced and increasingly distanced themselves from Beijing.

The logic of mutually assured destruction fundamentally altered the behavior of great powers, at least with respect to each other. It is to be hoped that the logic of the “balance of terror” is going to be enough to keep the US and China level-headed in the future, despite rapidly growing tensions between the two.

The Breakdown of Civilization

Unfortunately enough, war crimes are the norm rather than the exception when it comes to armed conflict. The claim that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ontologically different rests on a technological assumption. For some reason, nuclear weapons are fundamentally different from conventional ones. I am not sure what constitutes the basis of this assumption. Take the firebombings of the German cities of during the Second World War, which cost the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary people — women, children, the elderly. Take the massacre of , in Ukraine, where in two days nearly 34,000 Jews were killed by German Einstazgruppen. Or, going back further in history, take the death toll during the Thirty Years War, which cost the lives of half of the population of what is today Germany.

Massacres of the most atrocious form are hardly an invention of the 20^th century, as Goya’s renditions of the barbarities visited on his fellow countrymen during the war against the French between 1808 and 1814, depicted in most horrifying detail. This was a war against an enemy that invaded the country in the name of the Enlightenment and revolutionary fervor. Or, as the Germans would say, Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag ich dir den Schädel ein — If you don’t want to be my brother, I will smash your skull.

For the victims of war crimes — more often than not civilians — it probably does not really matter how they were killed and why they were killed. It is quite understandable — human all too human, as Nietzsche would say — that horrendous deeds provoke retribution. The firebombing of German cities, the rape of German women caught be advancing Soviet armies — both are understandable given the atrocities committed by Germans during the war, in the name of Hitler and the Third Reich. Most Germans, or so most recent research suggests, were more than comfortable supporting a regime that guaranteed them a modicum of prosperity. Few asked where it came from.

For that, Germans were punished in the most horrendous fashion. Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne and many other towns and cities went up in flames, leaving behind a landscape hardly different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombing of Hamburg was named Operation Gomorrah, after the Biblical city destroyed by “” for its sins, and, to historian Keith Lowe, was on completely different level than the German raids on Coventry and London, “comparable with what happened in Nagasaki.” It was a just retribution for the crimes committed in their name, a retribution for the tens of millions of victims who paid with their lives for Hitler’s ambitions to conquer the world.

I would suggest that the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the retribution for the crimes committed by Japanese forces, in the name of racial superiority hardly different from Nazi ideology, against the peoples subjugated during the war. I have grave doubts that the victims of the Nanjing massacre or of the hundreds of young Asian “” pressed into sexual slavery by Japanese forces would consider the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime, but rather than an act of just retribution for Japanese atrocities committed during the war.

Whether or not the United States was justified in meting out redistribution is a different question. After all, given America’s self-declared status as a leading Christian nation, it should perhaps have heeded the words of the Bible exhorting believers not to take revenge, “but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). But then, Americans have a tendency to pay lip service to the scripture while doing the opposite in real life.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of these turning points in history that define a whole epoch. It demonstrated, once and for all, humanity’s ability to destroy itself. Had Hitler been in a position to get hold of “the bomb,” he surely would have used it to obliterate London, Moscow, perhaps even New York. The same goes for Stalin, only this time it would have been Berlin that would have gone up in a mushroom. If the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime, it was nothing more than another episode in a long history of atrocities committed in the course of wars, not more, not less — an episode which reaffirms once again the sad reality that the veneer of civilization is merely skin deep.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Japan’s surrender in 1945 officially ended World War II. It marked a glorious moment in history for the United States. But most serious historians agree on one fact that everyone has insisted on forgetting. The war would have ended without the demonstration of American scientific and military prowess carried out at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.

Interactive: The Story of World War II

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If history has any meaning, humanity should have applied to August 6, 1945, the very words President Franklin D. Roosevelt used at the beginning of America’s war with Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. More than Pearl Harbor, August 6, 1945, should be remembered as “a date which will live in infamy.” 

In the article originally published to mark the 70th anniversary of the events that led to the end of World War II, the author, Gar Alperovitz, reminds us that almost every US military leader at the time counseled against dropping the bomb. It cites the testimony of Admiral William Leahy, President Harry Truman’s chief of staff; Henry “Hap” Arnold, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces; Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet; and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr., commander of the US Third Fleet.

All these senior officers agreed that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment.” Even Major General Curtis LeMay, who nearly 30 years later tried to push John F. Kennedy into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile in 1962, agreed that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

General Dwight Eisenhower, the future president, also believed “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.” But Eisenhower added this consideration of profound geopolitical importance, which directly contradicts the official pretext given by the government and repeated in the official narrative, that thousands of American soldiers would die in the final assault on Japan. “I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives,” he said.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

World opinion:

The understanding people across the globe have of how a hegemonic power works for or against their interests, a phenomenon that hegemonic powers learn to ignore as soon as they become convinced of the stability and durability of their hegemony

Contextual Note

World War II marked a sea-change in geopolitics. It literally ushered in the era of technological rather than purely military and economic hegemony. The real point of the bomb was to provide a graphic demonstration of how technological superiority rather than mere economic and military clout would define hegemony in the decades to come. That’s why the US has been able to consistently lose wars but dominate the global economy.

“President Truman’s closest advisers viewed the bomb as a diplomatic and not simply a military weapon,” Alperovitz writes. It �ɲ�����’t just about ending the war but modeling the future. Truman’s secretary of state, James Byrnes, “believed that the use of atomic weapons would help the United States more strongly dominate the postwar era.” He seemed to have in mind the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower would later denounce.

Eisenhower’s prediction about world opinion in the aftermath of the nuking of Japan was apparently wrong. Polls in 1945 showed that only 4% of Americans said they would not have used the bomb. Relieved to see the war over, the media and governments across the globe made no attempt to mobilize world opinion against a manifest war crime.

On the basis of the letters to the editor of The Times, one researcher nevertheless reached the that, in the UK, a majority of “civilians were outraged at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” This probably reflects opinion across most of Europe. The Vatican roundly the use of nuclear weapons, even two years before the bombing of Japan and then again after the war, but it had little impact on public opinion.

Focused on the drama of the Nuremberg trials rather than the mass destruction in Japan, the nations of the world very quickly adjusted to the fatality of living with the continued presence of nuclear bombs. They even accepted the bomb as a stabilizing norm in what quickly became the Cold War’s nuclear arms race. After all, the idea of mutuality in the strategy of mutually assured destruction seemed to keep things in some sort of precarious balance. 

With history effectively rewritten in a manner agreeable to the hegemony-minded governments of the US, American soft diplomacy — spearheaded to a large extent by Hollywood — did the rest. The American way of life almost immediately became a global ideal, only peripherally troubled by Godzilla and other disturbing radioactive mutants.

Takeshi Matsuda explained in a 2008 in the Asia-Pacific Journal: “By the end of World War II, the U.S. government had recognized how important a cultural dimension of foreign policy was to accomplishing its broad national objectives.” Those “national objectives” had clearly become nothing less than global hegemony.

Historical Note

Post-World War II history contains a cruel irony. An inhuman nuclear attack on Japanese civilians became perceived as the starting point of a new world order under the leadership of the nation that perpetrated that attack. The new world order has ever since been described as the “rule of law.” 

Because the new order relied on the continued development of nuclear weapons, it might be more accurate to call it a “rule of managed terror.” It was built on the notion of fear. Over the following decades, the vaunted rule became increasingly dependent on a combination of expanding military might, mass surveillance, technological sophistication and the capacity of operational weapons to strike anywhere with great precision but without human intervention.

In his article, Gar Alperovitz quotes a pertinent remark in 1946 of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr., who called “the first atomic bomb … an unnecessary experiment. … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” But Halsey was mistaken. The scientists didn’t drop the bombs. The politicians — especially Harry Truman, with whom the was destined to stop — ordered it. And bomber pilots did the dropping. But Halsey’s intuition about the rise of technology as the key to hegemony was correct.

Whether Truman understood what was happening, or whether he was an unwitting tool of a group of American Dr. Strangeloves (the former Nazis were already being recruited), no historian has been able to determine. Fox News journalist Chris Wallace, in his book on Truman and the bomb, that the president “agonized over it,” as well he should have. 

The problem that remains for those who seek to understand the significance of our global history is that once the deed was done, Truman’s and everyone else’s agonizing ended. Shakespeare’s Macbeth famously “murdered sleep,” but America’s official historians, in the years following Hiroshima, succeeded in putting the world’s moral sense to sleep.

Humanity is still on the of nuclear annihilation. Some of the bellicose discourse we hear today may be bluff. But the US military has elaborated concrete plans for a nuclear war with China, and preparations for that war are already taking place. As journalist John Pilger out, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been pushing hard to foment a war mentality among the American public, partly because it is part of Trump’s reelection strategy and partly because Pompeo is “an evangelical fanatic who believes in the ‘rapture of the End.’”

World opinion, if our democracies knew how to consult it, would undoubtedly prefer the plain and simple annihilation of our nuclear capacity. But the dream of a democracy of humanity, in the place of competing nation-states, dwells only in an obscure political and psychological limbo, existing as something between an empty promise and wishful thinking.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

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It will certainly be the death knell for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, passed by the UN General Assembly in 1996. The treaty has never gone into effect because, while 184 nations endorsed it, eight key countries have yet to sign on: the United States, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Iran and North Korea.

Even without ratification, the treaty has had an effect. Many nuclear-armed countries, including the US, Britain and Russia, stopped testing by the early 1990s. China and France stopped in 1996, and India and Pakistan in 1998. Only North Korea continues to test.

Why India and China Are Fighting Right Now

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Halting the tests helped slow the push to make weapons smaller, lighter and more lethal, although over the years, countries have learned how to design more dangerous weapons using computers and sub-critical tests. For instance, without actually testing any weapon, the US recently created a “” that makes its warheads far more capable of knocking out an opponent’s missile silos. Washington has also just deployed a highly destabilizing low-yield warhead that has yet to be detonated.

Nonetheless, the test ban did — and does — slow the development of nuclear weapons and limits their proliferation to other countries. Its demise will almost certainly open the gates for others — perhaps Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Turkey or Brazil — to join the nuclear club.

“It would blow up any chance of avoiding a dangerous new nuclear arms race,” says Beatrice Fihn of the Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and “complete the erosion of the global arms control framework.”

A 20-Year Collapse

While the Trump administration has accelerated withdrawal from nuclear agreements, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement and START II, the erosion of treaties goes back almost 20 years. At stake is a tapestry of agreements dating back to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty that ended atmospheric testing. That first agreement was an important public health victory. A generation of “down winders” in Australia, the American Southwest, the South Pacific and Siberia are still paying the price for open-air testing.

The Partial Test Ban also broke ground for a host of other agreements. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) restricted the spread of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear-armed countries from threatening non-nuclear nations with weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, key parts of the agreement have been ignored by the major nuclear powers, especially Article VI that requires nuclear disarmament, followed by general disarmament.

What followed the NPT were a series of treaties that slowly dismantled some of the tens of thousands of warheads with the capacity to quite literally destroy the planet. At one point, the US and Russia had more than 50,000 warheads between them.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) reduced the possibility of a first-strike attack against another nuclear power. The same year, the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT I) put a limit on the number of long-range missiles. Two years later, SALT II cut back on the number of highly destabilizing multiple warheads on missiles and put ceilings on bombers and missiles.

The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement banned land-based medium-range missiles in Europe that had put the continent on a hair-trigger. Four years later, START I cut the number of warheads in the Russian and American arsenals by 80%. That still left each side with 6,000 warheads and 1,600 missiles and bombers. It would take 20 years to negotiate START II, which reduced both sides to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and banished multiple warheads from land-based missiles.

All of this is on the verge of collapse. While US President Donald Trump has been withdrawing from treaties, it was George W. Bush’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that tipped the first domino. The death of the ABM agreement put the danger of a first-strike back on the table and launched a new arms race. As the Obama administration began deploying ABMs in Europe, South Korea and Japan, the Russians began designing weapons to overcome them.

The ABM’s demise also led to the destruction of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) that banned medium-range, ground-based missiles from Europe. The US claimed the Russians were violating the INF by deploying a cruise missile that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead. The Russians countered that the American ABM system, the Mark 41 Aegis Ashore, could be similarly configured. (Moscow offered to let its cruise be examined, but NATO �ɲ�����’t .)

The White House has made it clear that it will not renew the START II treaty unless it includes Chinese medium-range missiles, but that is a poison pill. The Chinese have about one-fifth the number of warheads that Russia and the US have, and most of China’s potential opponents — India, Japan and US bases in the region — are within medium range.

While Chinese and Russian medium-range missiles do not threaten the American homeland, US medium-range missiles in Asia and Europe could decimate both countries. In any case, how would such an agreement be configured? Would the US and Russia reduce their warhead stockpile to match China’s , or would China increase its weapons levels to match Moscow and Washington? Both are unlikely. If START II goes, so do the limits on warheads and launchers, and we are back to the height of the Cold War.

Why Is This Happening?

On many levels, this makes no sense. Russia and the US have more than 12,000 warheads between them, more than enough to end civilization. Recent studies of the impact of a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan found it would have worldwide repercussions by altering rain patterns and disrupting agriculture. Imagine what a nuclear war involving China, Russia and the US and its allies would do.

Partly, this is a matter of simple greed. The new program will  in the range of $1.7 trillion, with the possibility of much more. Modernizing the “triad” will require new missiles, ships, bombers and warheads, all of which will enrich virtually every segment of the US arms industry.

But this is about more than a rich payday. There is a section of the US military and political class that would actually like to use nuclear weapons on a limited scale. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review explicitly reverses the Obama ���峾���Ծ����ٰ����پ��Dz�’s&�Բ�����; away from nuclear weapons, reasserting their importance in U.S. military doctrine.

That is what the recently deployed low-yield warhead on America’s Trident submarine is all about. The  packs a five-kiloton punch, or about one-third the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, a far cry from the standard nuclear warheads with yields of 100 kilotons to 475 kilotons.

The US rationale is that a “small” warhead will deter the Russians from using their low-yield nuclear warheads against NATO. The Trump administration says the Russians have a plan to do exactly that, figuring the US would hesitate to risk an all-out nuclear exchange by replying in kind. There is, in fact,  such a plan exists, and Moscow denies it.

According to the Trump administration, China and Russia are also  the ban on nuclear tests by setting off low-yield, hard to detect warheads. No evidence has been produced to show this, and no serious scientist supports the charge. Modern seismic weapons detection is so efficient it can detect warheads that fail to go critical, so-called duds.

Bear baiting — and dragon drubbing in the case of China — is a tried and true mechanism for opening the arms spigot. Some of this is about making arms manufacturers and generals happy, but it is also about the fact that the last war the US won was in Grenada. The US military lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, made a mess of Libya, Somalia and Syria, and is trying to extract itself from a stalemate in Yemen.

Just suppose some of those wars were fought with low-yield nukes? While it seems deranged — like using hand grenades to get rid of kitchen ants — some argue that if we don’t take the gloves off, we will continue to lose wars or get bogged down in stalemates.

Why Not?

The Pentagon knows the Russians are not a conventional threat because the US and NATO vastly outnumber and outspend Moscow. China is more of a conventional challenge, but any major clash could go nuclear, and no one wants that.

According to the Pentagon, the W76-2 may be used to respond “to significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” on the US or its allies’ “infrastructure,” including  That could include Iran.

Early in his term, President Trump  why the US can’t use its nuclear weapons. If Washington successfully torpedoes START II and restarts testing, he may get to do exactly that.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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US Cover for Israel

Early in the morning of September 22, 1979, a US satellite recorded a  near the Prince Edward Islands in the South Atlantic. The satellite, a Vela 5B, carries a device called a “bhangmeter” whose purpose is to detect nuclear explosions. Sent into orbit following the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, its job was to monitor any violations of the agreement. The treaty banned nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space.

Nuclear explosions have a unique footprint. When the weapon detonates, it sends out an initial pulse of light. But as the fireball expands, it cools down for a few milliseconds, then spikes again.

“Nothing in nature produces such a double-humped light flash,” says Victor Gilinsky. “The spacing of the hump gives an indication of the amount of energy, or yield, released by the explosion.” Gilinsky was a member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a former Rand Corporation physicist.

There was little question who had conducted the test. The Prince Edward islands were owned by South Africa, and US intelligence knew the apartheid government was conducting research into nuclear weapons. But while South Africa had yet to produce a nuclear weapon, Israel had nukes — and the two countries had close military ties. In short, it was almost certainly an Israeli weapon, though Israel denied it.

In the weeks that followed, clear evidence for a nuclear test emerged from hydrophones near Ascension Island and a jump in radioactive iodine-131 in Australian sheep. Only nuclear explosions produce iodine-131.

But the test came at a bad time for US President Jimmy Carter, who was gearing up his reelection campaign, a cornerstone of which was a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. If the Israelis were seen to have violated the Partial Test Ban, as well as the 1977 Glenn Amendment to the Arms Export Control Act, the US would have been required to cut off all arms sales to Israel and apply heavy sanctions. Carter was nervous about what such a finding would have on the election, since a major part of his platform was arms control and non-proliferation.

So Carter threw together a panel of experts whose job was not to examine the incident but to cover it up. The Ruina Panel cooked up a tortured explanation involving mini-meteors that the media accepted and, as a result, so did the American public.

But nuclear physicists knew the panel was blowing smoke and that the evidence was unarguable. The device was set off on a barge between Prince Edward Island (South Africa’s, not Canada’s) and Marion Island with a yield of between 3 and 4 kilotons. A secret CIA panel concurred but put the yield at 1.5 to 2 kilotons. For comparison, the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 was 15 kilotons.

It was also clear why the Israelis took the risk. Israel had a number of Hiroshima-style fission bombs but was working on producing a thermonuclear weapon — a hydrogen bomb. Fission bombs are easy to use, but fusion weapons are tricky and require a test. That the Vela picked it up was pure chance, since the satellite had been retired. But its bhangmeters were still working.

From Carter onward, every US president has covered up the Israeli violation of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, as well as the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). So when Netanyahu says Iran is lying about its nuclear program, much of the rest of the world —  including the US nuclear establishment — roll their eyes.

Nuclear Apartheid

As for President Erdogan, he is perfectly correct that the nuclear powers have broken the promise they made back in 1968 when the signed the NPT. Article VI of that agreement calls for an end to the nuclear arms race and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Indeed, in many ways, Article VI is the heart of the NPT. Non-nuclear armed countries signed the agreement, only to find themselves locked into a system of “nuclear apartheid” — where they agreed not to acquire such weapons of mass destruction, while China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and the US get to keep theirs.

The “big five” not only kept their weapons, but they are also all in the process of upgrading and expanding them. The US is meanwhile shedding other agreements, like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Agreement. Washington is also getting ready to abandon the  treaty that limits the US and Russia to a set number of warheads and long-range strategic launchers.

What is amazing is that only four other countries have abandoned the NPT: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and India (only the latter three have been sanctioned by the US). But that situation cannot hold forever, especially since part of Article VI calls for general disarmament, a pledge that has been honored in the breach. The US currently has nearly the defense budget in its history and spends as much on its military as 144 other countries .

While the US doesn’t seem able to win wars with that huge military — Afghanistan and Iraq remain disasters — it can inflict a stunning amount of damage that few countries are willing to absorb. Even when Washington doesn’t resort to its military, its sanctions can decimate a country’s economy and impoverish its citizens. North Korea and Iran are cases in point.

If the US were willing to cover up the 1979 Israeli test while sanctioning other countries that acquire nuclear weapons, why would anyone think that this is nothing more than hypocrisy on the subject of proliferation? And if the NPT is simply a device to ensure that other countries cannot defend themselves from other nations’ conventional and/or nuclear forces, why would anyone sign on or stay in the treaty?

Erdogan may be bluffing. He loves bombast and uses it effectively to keep his foes off balance. The threat may be a strategy for getting the US to back off on its support for Israel and Greece in their joint efforts to develop energy sources in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. 

But Turkey also has security concerns. In his , Erdogan pointed out, “There is Israel just beside us. Do they have [nuclear weapons]? They do.” He went on to say that if Turkey did not respond to Israeli “bullying,” in the region, “we will face the prospect of losing our strategic superiority in the region.”

Iran may be lying about the scope of its nuclear ambitions — although there is no evidence that Tehran is making a serious run at producing a nuclear weapon — but if they are, they’re in good company with the Americans and the Israelis.

The Path to Sanity

Sooner or later, someone is going to set off one of those nukes. The likeliest candidates are India and Pakistan, although use by the US and China in the South China Sea is not out of the question. Neither is a dustup between NATO and Russia in the Baltic. 

It is easy to blame the current resident of the White House for world tensions, except that the major nuclear powers have been ignoring their commitments on nuclear weapons and disarmament for over 50 years. 

The path back to sanity is thorny but not impossible. First, the US should rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, thus making Russia’s medium-range missiles unnecessary, and reduce tensions between the US and China by withdrawing ABM systems from Japan and South Korea.

Second, the US should reinstate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement and find a way to bring China, India and Pakistan into it. That will require a general reduction of US military forces in Asia, coupled with an agreement with China to back off on its claims over most of the South China Sea. Tensions between India and Pakistan would be greatly reduced by simply fulfilling the UN pledge to hold a referendum in Kashmir. The latter would almost certainly vote for independence. 

Third, the US must continue its adherence to the START agreement, while the “big five” countries need to halt the modernization of their existing arsenals — and begin, at long last, to implement Article VI of the NPT in regards to both nuclear and conventional forces.

Pie in the sky? Well, it beats a mushroom cloud.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 between Iran and 5+1 countries to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting crippling UN sanctions and other measures that were designed to put economic pressure on Tehran. As a result of this agreement, not only did Iran manage to again start selling oil, but it got to renew its outdated passenger airplanes by signing massive contracts with and . Post-UN sanctions Iran also attracted many , who saw the Iranian market of 80 million people as a perfect opportunity to expand their businesses.

Unfortunately, US President Donald Trump famously called the agreement “the worst deal ever,” announcing a unilateral US withdrawal from it in 2018. Since then, United States has renewed a vast set of economic sanctions against Iran, specially designed to put a total halt on the country’s oil exports that constitute Iran’s main revenue source. US sanctions are targeting not only Iranian companies and individuals, but anyone who does any kind of business with Iran, including the remaining signatories to the nuclear deal: Russia, China and members of the European Union.

Is the Deal Dead?

Political analysts and TV pundits around the world rushed to pronounce the Iran deal dead following Donald Trump’s decision to abandon it. Some moderate commentators it as “a dangerous blow to the most important diplomatic achievement in the Middle East,” but these voices are barely recognizable in a storm of irrational hyperbole. “At what point do you give up pretending that the nuclear deal has a future and start to grapple with the potential consequences of its demise?” argued one . “The Iranian nuclear deal looks all but dead,” states the first line of .

To add fuel to the fire, Iran continues to threaten to leave the JCPOA as well, and has started to take steps toward in recent months. This has been interpreted as the final proof that there is no hope for the agreement.

On the other hand, while a pessimistic narrative regarding the future of the deal persists, the EU has taken over the mediating role between Iran and the United States. Europe, seemingly stuck between America and Iran, has tried to calm the recent tensions. On July 15, after talks between EU foreign ministers, the union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, the international community that Iran’s recent activity to increase its stockpile of uranium and surpassing the uranium enrichment levels agreed under the JCPOA are all reversible and not significant.

The EU has also come up with different such as INSTEX (Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges) to facilitate trade with Iran by circumventing US sanctions and appeasing Tehran’s demands to do more to make up for the economic shortfall created by America’s withdrawal.

However, attributing a mere mediating role to the European countries is the opposite side of the same coin that labels America as the main Western player in the nuclear talks, which is factually incorrect. The term “Iran nuclear negotiations” was first used to describe a series of between Iran and the E3 (UK, France and Germany), when Iran agreed to join the nuclear talks in 2003 in order to maintain and enhance its trade ties with the European Union, which was Iran’s at the time. Similarly, Iran is threatening to pull out of the JCPOA not because it couldn’t receive the Boeings the country was looking to purchase, but because American sanctions are an obstacle in the way of smooth trade relations with the EU.

The path toward the signing of the JCPOA is mostly ignored today, partly due to the immediacy of the current crisis. Understanding this historical context is necessary for having a clear grasp of the recent tensions.

How It All Began

From the early days of the Islamic Republic, Iran failed to establish a healthy relationship with the West. In 1979, only a few months after the Islamic Revolution, a mob of angry university students entered the American Embassy in Tehran, taking its staff hostage. The 444-day-long crisis resulted in America and its Western allies putting pressure on the newly established regime by imposing economic sanctions. Though the effects of these sanctions are hard to measure due to the fact that the country was going through a devastating war with neighboring Iraq, it undeniably had a negative effect on the Iranian economy at the time.

In the following years, Iran accused some European countries of providing Saddam Hussein’s regime with chemical weapons that were used against Iranian civilians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Tensions with the European Union escalated further when the Iranian supreme leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the British author Salman Rushdie as an atonement for his book, “The Satanic Verses,” that reimagines the life of Prophet Muhammad. This, coupled with the results of the Mykonos trial, which in August 1997 found an Iranian citizen guilty of murdering a Kurdish opposition leader following an by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, caused many European countries to recall their ambassadors from Tehran.

It was only after the surprising election of Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s first reformist president, in April 1997, that the EU started to reengage with the Islamic Republic. President Khatami’s eagerness to engage with the outside world, best seen in his to the UN General Assembly urging for “dialogue among civilizations,” was perceived as a signal to the European countries to start a series of negotiations with Iran regarding a wide spectrum of concerns, alongside expanding trade ties with Tehran.

As has been suggested by EU officials, even though Iran’s current violations of the JCPOA are calibrated measures and reversible, if the country abandons the nuclear deal, it is only about a year away from developing a nuclear weapon.

Soon after, Germany became , and others followed. However, in 2002, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an opposition military group that advocates for the overthrow of the regime, revealed documents regarding Iran’s secret nuclear facilities. The incident pushed the relationship between Iran and the EU into a new phase. Representatives from the United Kingdom, France and Germany were joined by Javier Solana, then high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to form the so called E3/EU framework to negotiate with Iran. This became the birthplace of the nuclear talks that Tehran agreed to primarily in order to keep its trade ties with the European Union.

The United States joined the talks in 2006, forming the 5+1 alongside China, Russia, France and Germany, in order to facilitate a new round of negotiations with Iran after the country’s nuclear case was referred to UN Security Council. Thereafter, years of mostly fruitless negotiations under the conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought ever more crippling UN sanctions on the country’s economy, accompanied by continuous Western threats that “All options are on the table.”

Finally, after the reformist candidate Hassan Rouhani won the presidential election in 2013, helped along by the Obama administration’s emphasis on diplomacy and negotiations, the Iran deal became a reality. This was not only a manifestation of the effectiveness of diplomacy, but it also helped Iran’s reformists to solidify their power by emphasizing their great achievement.

The Main Counterpart

Understanding the EU’s role in the creation of the Iran nuclear deal as a key partner and not simply a mediator between Iran and the United States opens the field for a deal without Washington. Ayatollah Khamenei has several times, before and after the signing of the agreement, that the negotiation with the United States will be limited to nuclear talks, and that Tehran has no intentions in developing any form of relationship with Washington. The supreme leader has also rejected the notion of any negotiations between Iran and the United States while the latter is not complying with the JCPOA.

This might be a dead end — if we interpret the JCPOA as an agreement between Iran and the US. However, despite concerns about Washington’s betrayal of its international commitments, the Iran nuclear deal would be salvaged if Tehran could maintain its trade ties with the EU. This is exactly what EU is trying to do.

A realistic viewpoint concerning the state of the Iran nuclear deal at the moment is perhaps best presented by as “not in the best of health, but it’s still alive.” This is a shared view of all the signatories to the Iran deal, supported by Europe’s efforts to establish a new payment system that allows their companies to continue trade with Iran. There has been some about how far INSTEX can cajole Iran into complying with the JCPOA due to the lack of information about the system’s details. But an eager Russia has stepped forward to support the system, and China might do so as well in the near future. This might be the key to success but, as the former British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt has , although there is a small window to salvage the Iran deal, it is closing really fast.

As has been suggested by EU officials, even though Iran’s current violations of the JCPOA are calibrated measures and reversible, if the country abandons the nuclear deal, it is only about a from developing a nuclear weapon. It may not be an immediate danger for Europe, but in the already destabilized Middle East, the rise of a nuclear Iran would be catastrophic. Iran’s greatest rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, has that if it becomes clear that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, Riyadh will start its own program. There are uncertainties about how Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, will react to all these developments.

Even without an atomic bomb, the prospect of a severed relationship between Iran and the EU would not be desirable, at least for the Western allies. Let’s not forget that China will buy Iranian oil, whether or not there are sanctions in place. Furthermore, Iran’s active involvement in China’s Road and Belt Initiative could push Iran to form an alliance with Beijing, which could lead to the expansion of Chinese influence in the region. Iran can also pressure the European Union on matters such as drug trafficking and immigration from the war-torn Middle East.

And, of course, there is the prospect of a military clash that not only involves the United States but, as warmongers such as Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wish, would drag a coalition of European forces into another war in the Middle East.

Inside Iran

A dying nuclear deal is also affecting the political atmosphere within Iran in an irreversible way. After the signing of the JCPOA, Tehran managed to resume trade with some European companies but, with the US out of the agreement and various punishments for companies doing business with Iran in place, it is unlikely that Iran’s economy will recover any time soon, or at least until measures like INSTEX prove their potential. This is bad news for the reformist President Rouhani, who was elected on the promise of solving the county’s economic problems by negotiating with the West.

Iranian hard-line conservatives opposed any negotiation with foreign powers from the very beginning of the nuclear talks. Consequently, the US withdrawal from the deal only proved the conservatives’ point of view, serving as proof of how unreliable the West is. Considering the fact that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been a vocal critic of Rouhani’s diplomatic achievements, one can easily draw a line between internal rivalries in Iran and the IRGC’s recent hostile activity in the Strait of Hormuz.

The nuclear negotiations were initially launched as a hope for the European countries to deradicalize the Islamic Republic of Iran and for the Iranian side to continue trading with Europe. The JCPOA proved that this can be achieved, if imperfectly. The Iran nuclear deal is still in place and will continue if the European Union can maneuver away from the sheer absurdity of the world according to Donald Trump, in which drama is winning over reality.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Although Booker undoubtedly took this stance to separate himself from the other candidates, he also enjoyed the distinction of being correct. Leaving the JCPOA was a costly miscalculation that changed Washington’s global relations. But, rather than clinging to the past, the US is best served by considering alternatives to the JCPOA in the future.

In July 2015, Iran and the P5+1 powers — the United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members, US, France, UK, China and Russia, plus Germany — agreed to enter the . Under the agreement, Iran was required to reduce its number of centrifuges by two-thirds, restrict its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98% and limit uranium enrichment to 3.67%. Moreover, the deal required Iran to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its nuclear facilities and to implement the — a voluntary agreement that provides the IAEA expanded access in the select countries that choose to implement it.

Put simply, the deal limited Iran’s nuclear program to civilian uses by restricting technology, enrichment and potential uranium stockpiles while also subjecting the country to the international community’s most comprehensive nuclear inspection regime. In return, the P5+1 lifted a number of economic sanctions against Tehran.

Changed Context

Although the , many in Washington criticized the JCPOA, believing it to be too soft. Critics identified a number of flaws, such as the so-called and the utter lack of language in the deal pertaining to ballistic missile technology or Iran’s . Due to these criticisms, the JCPOA was enacted as a rather than a legally binding treaty or executive agreement because the Obama administration lacked the votes to ensure congressional approval.

The JCPOA was admittedly imperfect but, when it was negotiated, it was the best possible solution for constraining Iranian nuclear power and normalizing US-Iran relations. However, by leaving the agreement in 2018, the Trump administration significantly changed that context.

Since the US withdrew from the deal and , straining the country’s economy, the Islamic Republic has reportedly in the Strait of Hormuz, an unmanned US drone and began with the JCPOA. In turn, the US has moved of troops and equipment to the region and launched against Iranian intelligence groups. Both Tehran and Washington are playing a game of brinkmanship in which it is entirely possible to misidentify the adversary’s red line.

Accordingly, the two countries are now than they have been in years. If this situation continues to escalate, a negotiated diplomatic solution will be necessary. Yet such a solution will not resemble the JCPOA, which — while designed to reduce tensions — was never intended to be a peace treaty. Even if the United States and Iran are able to avoid unchecked escalation, the JCPOA will still not be the best solution to addressing US security concerns when it comes to Iran.

Different Objectives

This time, the calculus on both sides is different. By leaving the JCPOA, the Trump administration set the stage for renegotiation by potentially changing one profound factor: Iran’s objective. In 2015, Iran wanted sanctions relief. In 2019, it is logical to assume that Iran desires sanctions relief that cannot be taken away at the whim of the White House. In other words, while Iran would prefer a multilateral agreement ensuring sanctions relief under already negotiated stipulations, the country is likely to prioritize a deal that is legally binding for the US, unlike the JCPOA.

A legally binding agreement could materialize : a treaty ratified by two-thirds of the US Senate, or a congressional-executive agreement requiring approval by a simple majority in both houses of Congress. While a treaty ratified by two-thirds of the Senate would be the most desirable in terms of , a congressional-executive agreement is more realistic. This is because a simple majority in both houses is easier to politically achieve than a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Even this agreement is likely to require a bipartisan vote, which means that at least some of the primary opponents of the JCPOA — the Republicans — will need to support the agreement.

Iran’s potentially shifting objective, and the corresponding necessity for US bipartisanship, gives future US negotiators an edge that the negotiators in 2015 did not have. If Iran’s objective has truly shifted to assured sanctions relief, then its leaders must be willing to accept more rigorous restrictions, as these restrictions are the only way of securing Republican support. Although Iran will still refuse the , it may be more amenable to addressing some of the criticisms leveled in 2015.

Republicans, meanwhile, will have an incentive to work with Iran. If a stronger, more restrictive deal can be crafted as a result of the White House leaving the JCPOA, their party wins a major communications victory and helps deescalate the situation in the Middle East. It is Republicans could be convinced to vote in favor of a restrictive, but also legally binding, nuclear deal in the future.

The situations addressed above are hypothetical and may never come to pass. In some future context, the JCPOA may be the best deal, in others it is irrelevant, and in others still it may serve as a foundation for a new and better deal. Regardless, promising reentry into the JCPOA now is a mistake. In fact, clinging to the best deal of the past could very well jeopardize the best deal of the future.

*[Young Professionals in Foreign Policy is a of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Leaving the JCPOA May Have Been a Mistake, But So Is Reentering It appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Japan and South Korea, two of America’s most important allies in Asia, are at the point of a diplomatic breakup. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently imposed what amounts to on a variety of products made by its Asian ally in retaliation for a decision by South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The two countries’ dispute stems from a decades-long inability to resolve outstanding issues related to Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 and effective enslavement of Koreans as laborers and sex workers. Since 1965, various attempts have been made to resolve these disputes, the most recent in 2015. It was President Moon’s decision last November to step back from one of the provisions of that most recent attempt that has led to the current standoff.

Mutual trade tariffs — the apparent go-to response in international disputes nowadays following the precedent of the US president’s preferred response — export and import quotas, visa restrictions and now threats of withdrawal from critical intelligence-sharing agreements have made this a potential crisis. Japan and South Korea are the second and fourth biggest economies in Asia and the continent’s most stalwart democracies. This isn’t supposed to happen between democracies. The dispute could threaten the global supply chain and even undermine efforts to bring North Korea’s nuclear weapons program to heel. The stakes are high.

Meanwhile, Washington, for whom the two nations represent pillars of its Indo-Pacific policy, seems to respond with a shrug of the shoulders. President Donald Trump, demurring from US involvement, such a diplomatic undertaking was “like a full-time job.” Statements from the State Department have amounted to little more than parental “Play nice, you two!” admonitions.

Old Wounds, New Battles

Elsewhere in Asia, India and Pakistan have renewed their recurrent hostilities. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 of the constitution, which dated back to 1949 and gave Jammu and Kashmir its special status; now it will be treated as a nominal political and administrative entity of India. Pakistan responded with trade sanctions — again we see it — and the expulsion of India’s ambassador to Islamabad. India has deployed troops to the region to maintain order.

The two South Asian behemoths have been in almost perpetual feuding mode since their independence in 1947, including wars in 1948, 1965, 1971, 1985 and 1999. Lesser skirmishes between Pakistani and Indian forces have occurred more frequently. While war appears unlikely at this juncture — the risk of escalation between the two nuclear-armed nations makes open conflict always a dangerous proposition — the unsettled nature of the Kashmir region and heightened nature of tensions render crystal ball reading hardly more than a coin toss.

The presence of Islamic militant organizations in the Pakistan-controlled areas further complicates the standoff. Though influenced by Islamabad, these groups operate according to their own ideological playbook, and attacking Indians or Indian forces in the area has been a pattern. How India might respond in today’s stressed circumstances is uncertain.

Washington may have oafishly and ineptly exacerbated this latest round of tensions. During a visit last month by Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, to Washington and a meeting with President Trump, the latter maladroitly in the two countries’ dispute. While such mediation might be welcome in Islamabad, that is most definitely not, nor has ever been, the case in New Delhi.

Trump’s ill-considered intervention is unlikely to be the cause of this latest fall-out. But it shouldn’t be discounted. Aside from anodyne press statements from the State Department about respecting the rights of the residents of the region and peaceful settlement of differences, there’s little sign that the White House has any intention of acting on the president’s offer to Prime Minister Kahn or taking any other action to calm hostilities.

The US maintains a delicate relationship with both nations. Pakistan is critical to Washington’s efforts to negotiate a successful understanding with the Taliban on Afghanistan’s future and end America’s 18-year long war there, something desperately wanted by Trump and most Americans. India, over the last two decades, has emerged from behind the self-imposed isolation of strict neutrality, largely a result of its close ties with the former Soviet Union, and established itself as a rising global power, though not yet on par with China.

It is the world’s largest democracy, and Washington has been working patiently to strengthen its ties with the region’s dominant power as an Asian counterbalance to China. Renewed tensions between these two countries are patently not in Washington’s or anyone’s interest. No good whatsoever can come of it.

Fracture Zone

This brings us even closer to American interests, the pending UK exit from the EU, aka Brexit. The UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnston, has all but promised his nation’s departure from the world’s largest trading bloc by the EU-mandated date of October 31, with or without an agreement. The so-called hard or no-deal Brexit would likely lead to considerable economic disruption in Britain and potentially exhume haunting animosities in Northern Ireland. Beyond that, predictions are hard to come by, though largely pessimistic.

Dating back to his stump speeches as a , Donald Trump has all but abetted Brexit. More recently, in voicing his support for Johnson, Trump has on Britain leaving the EU. While he’s also promised to quickly negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with Britain once it does leave, such a deal would do little for the US and would hardly replace the enormity of trade and other business Britain currently does with the EU. Furthermore, little assessment has been made of the impact of the British departure from the EU, currently America’s largest trading partner in the world. A weakened EU, most of whose members are also members of America’s most important strategic alliance, NATO, is patently not in US interests.

Problems elsewhere in the world garner less attention but still present concerns to the regions in which they occur and to America’s wide-ranging interests. In Hong Kong, Algeria, Sudan and Russia citizens are rising up to challenge the established ruling order, i.e., dictatorships. In Algeria and Sudan, outsiders — unsurprisingly authoritarian regimes themselves — are supporting the entrenched ruling class, usually the armed forces leaderships and compromised political and business elites. These include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Russia.

Though still lacking in effective political organization, this rise of the people to challenge the status quo and demand rule of law, accountability, respect for human rights and fair elections is another demonstration of the universal yearning for democracy and freedom.

The US, a champion of democracy throughout most of the postwar period under successive Democratic and Republican administrations, has been largely quiet. Neither the White House nor the State Department has seen fit to lend even a modest word of encouragement to those risking lives to call some of the world’s most autocratic regimes to account.

A Loss of Moral Leadership

Taken alone or even collectively, these challenges to global stability might have been taken in stride by a pre-Trump US foreign policy leadership. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and even Barack Obama would have made phone calls to counterparts of friends and allies and dispatched able secretaries of state such as George Schultz, Jim Baker, Warren Christopher, Condoleezza Rice or John Kerry and their teams of seasoned experts to help mend such difficulties. 

But America under Trump, no longer the steward of global stability, is busy stirring its own pot of poisonous potions. An escalating trade dispute with the world’s second largest economy, China, threatens the global economy. Neither side seems prepared to search for serious options as both drive furiously toward a head-on collision. President Trump, when not upping tariffs, pours rhetorical gasoline on the simmering feud, foolishly believing that trade wars are “.”

In Iran, the US administration appears to be succeeding in bringing the economy of that nation to its knees but with no apparent plan to actually bring the Islamic Republic around to a new agreement that would fix the shortcomings of the earlier nuclear accord negotiated under Obama and broken by Trump.

Even at home, stability and predictability are two words never used to describe this president’s domestic programs. His overwrought policies on immigration and the border with Mexico, strained relations with both Mexico and Canada on trade, and venomous and inflammatory rhetoric on race have left many Americans with knots in their stomachs. Donald Trump’s leadership “philosophy” is a tragic departure from that of previous occupants of the office. Franklin Roosevelt once it as “not merely an administrative office… [but] pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.” Under Trump, it’s become an office to divide, debase, degrade, distract and disgorge bilious bombast.

The US Senate, once known as the world’s “greatest deliberative body” and historically the legislative body more engaged in US foreign policy, has passively submitted to heretofore unthinkable positions and pronouncements of the president. In today’s Republican-controlled Senate, deliberation has degenerated into scandalous deference. The Republican majority has thwarted rational legislation on guns, passively ignored the brutal treatment of Central Americans fleeing their countries for the US through Mexico, refused to take up legislation to tighten America’s electoral process against foreign intervention before the 2020 election, and discounted serious and potentially impeachable actions by the president, to name but a few of the many serious issues unaddressed.

Is There an Adult in the House?

Since World War II, Americans and most people around the world took solace in the fact that US leadership, though far from immune from problem-making, could walk the always tough course of its own domestic policy and still chew the sticky and often distasteful gum of international diplomacy. It would work with its many allies and friends around the world to diffuse crises, head off conflicts and sooth edgy nerves of nations and their leaders.

Donald Trump asserted during his many campaign speeches and in subsequent statements as president that the world had taken advantage of the US and that it had become a global chump. It was settling fights while having its own lunch money taken away. Many around the world, while not necessarily agreeing with this warped assessment, nevertheless concluded similarly. American leadership has become an anachronism, its clumsy and ineffective military forays contributing to rather than alleviating the world’s instability. It has become irrelevant in a multipolar world where America’s is just another voice.

What President Trump and like-minded Americans, as well as others around the world, have forgotten, however, is the unique ability of the United States to convene. That is, its capacity to bring nations together to address global and even regional problems and ultimately to head off conflict. To be sure, the American record is less than perfect, as history confirms. But the role of convener was ably, if not perfectly, filled.

Over the course of the last 10-15 years, that distinctive ability has been squandered by a needless war in Iraq, an extended and seemingly never-ending war in Afghanistan, an all-consuming global war on terror, and an often vacillating and unfocused foreign policy. Despite his contributions to this development, President Obama deserves credit for ushering forward the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear deal, all of which followed in the tradition of his predecessors of leveraging America’s power and influence for the good not only of the US but also of nations everywhere. Having abrogated his predecessor’s achievements, President Trump now appears bent on full-scale abandonment of America’s historic role as the world’s convener-in-chief.

The present state of affairs may have indeed been inevitable. Nations like China, among others, have risen in power and influence. The global economy has grown so massive and dynamic that no nation, not even one with the dominance of the US, could truly lead or manage it. But in the absence of America — the mediator, conciliator, convener — are we left with a free-for-all?

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As one surveys the global landscape, there are disturbing signs that affairs in the world are not what we — whether in America, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan or Europe — should wish them to be. The devolution of power and action to regional powers with little control ought to be cause for alarm. It leaves the problems and the countries involved therein vulnerable to bad actors, such as terrorists, or the stronger seeking to gain advantage at the weaker one’s expense.

Governments lacking the guard rails of genuine participatory democracy and rule of law ignore, if not abuse, their citizens. Without such brakes, any one of the tensions we now see could escalate in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world.

Would the world prefer to see active, principled diplomacy by the US to address such problems? Perhaps not. There is always the possibility of making things worse. But if not the United States, then who?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The World Without American Leadership appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the early 1980s, Europe was vulnerable to military escalations due to tension between NATO and countries of the Warsaw Pact, a collective defense treaty signed by the Soviet Union and most of the other Eastern Bloc states in 1955. Several crises occurred during the Cold War but, for Europe, the 1970s and 1980s was a significant moment. For instance, the  exercise in 1983 — which saw NATO forces conduct a full-scale simulated release of nuclear weapons — resulted in the forces of the Warsaw Pact being ready to launch an actual assault as they thought the drill was the first phase of an offensive, with Germany as the battlefield.

To support the expected battle, both the Soviet Union and the United States deployed ground-launched missiles (SS20 vs Pershing II) with nuclear heads on German soil, which resulted in people demonstrating against a potential Armageddon. Known as the , the situation came to an end due to US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Americans and the Soviets agreed to destroy ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles that could travel between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. As it was accompanied by intrusive verification procedures, the INF Treaty was highly effective, with a of 2,692 short and intermediate-range missiles and 149 sites destroyed by 1991.

INF Withdrawal

Today, things have dramatically changed, and the decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the INF is by no means a surprise, nor is Moscow’s in doing the same. Tensions initially rose in the early 2000s when the US withdrew unilaterally from the , which was seen by President George W. Bush as a The demise of this treaty was met largely with silence, especially at a time where US-Russia relations were warming up. It was also a moment when the was established, advancing the relationship between the alliance and the Kremlin.

Yet the issue of nuclear warheads and missiles — rebranded under the concept of missile defense — resurfaced in the follow-up to the 2010 Lisbon Treaty. NATO allies had called for a comprehensive ballistic missile defense architecture since the Bucharest Summit of 2008. What was at stake was the protection of NATO members against missiles that could be fired from rogue states, with Iran seen as a potential threat.

In 2009, the Obama administration replaced an earlier missile defense system with the (EPAA), which was part of a US contribution to NATO. This was meant to rebuild cohesion with the Europeans after a decade of engagement in Afghanistan, which had led to operational fatigue. Missile defense was perceived as a way of strengthening ties between the allies and helping maintain the commitment to collective defense, a fundamental principle of NATO.

At the Chicago Summit of 2012, the first steps and technical developments to implement the ballistic missile defense (BMD) system were announced. This the ability “to defend the populations, territory and forces across southern NATO Europe against a ballistic missile attack.” Russia was not pleased. Despite official NATO speeches stating that the latest shield was not directed against Russia, the BMD was a .

In 2014, the situation worsened after Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea and the hybrid warfare campaign waged in Eastern Ukraine. At the Wales Summit in September of the same year, NATO condemned and took a series of measures. This included the decision to freeze every practical element of cooperation between NATO and Russia if Moscow continued to break international law.

In 2015 and throughout 2016, Russia tested and deployed its ground-based missile called (NATO codename, SS-26 Stone) in Kaliningrad, the enclave between the Baltic States and Poland, from where its 500 kilometer-range nuclear-capable system could threaten US assets as well as capital cities of some NATO members. In support of the Assad regime in Syria, Moscow also announced the deployment of S-400 Triumf batteries, an advanced anti-missile and anti-aerial defense system.

NATO’s Response

The choice to deploy these systems had both military and political implications for NATO countries. Analysts debated the reality of the Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy, a combination of layered defenses that would challenge the ability of NATO forces to support allies if they were under attack, as a proved. Despite some new initiatives launched to great fanfare at the Wales Summit in 2014 and Warsaw Summit in 2016 — which were based on reassuring allies by deploying a forward presence in the Baltic States and by creating a battle-ready joint taskforce — NATO struggled to answer in a timely manner.

The culprit is not the fact that the Russian arms industry has developed — at least since 2002 — and has been fielding a new set of ground-to-ground cruise missiles that appeared to exceed the range set in the INF Treaty. The issue is that Russia has deliberately chosen to seize every occasion to challenge the West and NATO by undermining the alliance’s credibility and unity.

One blatant example is Turkey and its deal to the Russian S-400 Air-defense system. Agreed in December 2017, the move has raised concerns in Washington due to the fact that Ankara was also on the list of countries waiting to acquire the F-35 fighter jets from the US. The delivery of the first batch of missiles to Turkey in July 2019 has NATO, in light of the mandatory interoperability of the armed forces that is to the alliance. For NATO, the issue is less about the compatibility of the systems and more about the risk of seeing highly-classified information on stealth fighter jets being transferred to Russia.

Within the alliance itself, there has also been growing tension since 2016 amid the unexpected events of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Ever since he entered office, Trump has expressed his opinion about an “” NATO. The summits of 2017 and 2018 saw several clashes, with the US president criticizing some members of the alliance for on their defense and not formally committing to article 5 of the NATO charter about the reciprocity in collective defense. Whilst Jim Mattis, the US defense secretary at the time, tried to do , other NATO members were profoundly shaken by Trump’s comments.

Therefore, when the US administration gave evidence in December 2018 that Russia was in material of its INF obligations, NATO called on Moscow to urgently return to full and verifiable compliance with the treaty. And so goes the story: On February 1, 2019, the US to suspend its obligations under Article XV of the INF Treaty and terminate it within six months, on August 2.

From a , the support provided to the United States was both a political and military necessity. To quote Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, the Russian decision made the INF useless by having only one party bound to the treaty whilst the other was not ready to comply. This can be understood as a will by NATO members not to confront the White House on a sensitive matter and create additional tension when there should be none. Militarily speaking, it also makes sense to upgrade systems without entering a “new arms race,” whilst at the same time remaining prudent and responding in a “measured and responsible way” with a “balanced, coordinated and defensive package of measures,” ensuring credible and effective deterrence and defense.

Grand Powers

The problem is that NATO is in a dire situation for three reasons. First, as many commentators have noted, the of strategic instability between Russia and the US does have implications for Europe. If one reads this issue from the US administration’s perspective, it seems that China — not Russia — is the reason Trump to scrap the INF Treaty. The rising competition in the Asia Pacific between Washington and Beijing leaves Europe to itself, while NATO does not appear to be high on the list of the Trump administration’s priorities.

Second, when it comes to its perceived security, the US advances at a rapid pace that European allies cannot match. The gap between the US defense budget and those of the allies is enormous. In an alliance of 29 countries, the US budget represents more than 50% of global spending of the other member states. This has a host of implications, with the US being the only ally without shortfalls in its military capabilities. A case in point was in 2011 when Washington was forced to support other NATO allies in the Libyan War where it had to cruise missiles because the stockpiles of France and Britain were running low.

Third, the strategic assessment done throughout NATO capitals does not consider the INF crisis as a game-changer. It certainly is a significant development in the security of the alliance, but it only reaffirms what has been done covertly and overtly by the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin has been in charge.

What is now at stake for NATO is to identify how to best counter Russian capabilities. Should it be only through a resumption of the arms control process? Or should it be by bolstering its defensive and offensive capabilities by upgrading its existing missile systems, at the risk of being accused of violating its own when the alliance says it is not directed against Russia?

Again, one answer might lie in NATO’s history and the established to combine the political and military approach and avoid the arms race of the 1970s. Whereas the political approach focused on a détente, the military side of the alliance believed that deterrence was still needed with a credible defense.

This recipe might still be effective, yet things have changed. First, none of the existing superpowers (the US, China or Russia) has any interest in legally-binding limits, which undermines any possibility of new arms control mechanisms. Second, NATO as an alliance must define its new role: Will it be a global security provider? Does it need to refocus on its core business — collective defense — or does it still want to address the other key tasks (cooperative security and crisis management) defined in the ? Should it modify its decision-making process to be more responsive?

These discussions have plagued the alliance since 2014 when Russia reemerged as a major threat. Tensions exist for member states in the east with the danger coming from Moscow, as well as states in the south due to illegal migration and terrorism. The risk of a regionalized, fragmented NATO with some allies looking to the east and others to the south will be the most challenging issue in the long run.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Are Russia and NATO Getting Ready for a New Euromissile Crisis? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The UK impounded an Iranian oil tanker suspected of breaching EU sanctions against Syria. In response, Iran has seized two , one sailing under the British flag and the other under Panama’s. Such is the state of affairs that Iran has been arresting spies accused of working for the CIA and sentencing some of them to death.

Analysts and commentators hold a wide range of views on the crisis. These views make sense only when we know some background.

The Story of the Iran Nuclear Deal

In 2015, Iran signed an agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany, known as the P5+1. In return for the lifting of economic sanctions, Iran agreed not only to limit its nuclear activities, but also to allow in international inspectors. US President Donald Trump never liked the deal that his predecessor, Barack Obama, worked hard to negotiate and abandoned it in 2018.

Scroll down to read more on this 360° series

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — commonly known as the — madeIran reduce its 200,000 centrifuges to a mere 5,060 old and inefficient ones until 2026. This decrease would have destroyed Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to “weapons-grade” status. The Iranians also agreed to reduce their uranium stockpile by 98% to a paltry 300 kilograms. The JCPOA also blocked Iran’s pathway to weapons-grade plutonium.

The Obama administration saw the Iran nuclear deal as its crowning achievement, and the White House categorically declared that the “JCPOA cuts off all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.” The administration the deal made Israel safer and that the world supported it. Many analysts welcomed the deal, but some senators disagreed.

Led by Tom Cotton, they opposed the JCPOA, as did hardliners in Tehran. Ironically, the US and Iran were quietly collaborating against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria and Iraq at this time. This did not matter to hardliners in both countries. Republicans took a more ideological view against Iran harking back to the “axis of evil” line of thinking of George W. Bush. As per this view, Iran is a destabilizing revolutionary power and its theocratic regime must be toppled to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East.

President Obama took a more pragmatic view. His foreign policy was characterized by the Asia Pivot, which meant refocusing American efforts on Asia instead of the Middle East. To do so, rapprochement with Iran was essential. It allowed the US to extricate itself from the Middle East. The Iran nuclear deal also put downward pressure on the price of oil and allowed Obama to put some daylight between the US and Saudi Arabia.

Once Trump got elected in 2016, the older ideological thinking returned. John Bolton, a confidante of Bush and a well-known hawk, is Trump’s national security adviser. In May 2018, President Trump pulled out of the JCPOA and has been turning the screws on Iran ever since. His reinstatement of has pushed the Iranian economy into deep recession. Iran’s currency has crashed, incomes have declined and inflation has soared.

With its back to the wall, Iran has by passing the uranium enrichment cap set in the 2015 nuclear deal. Since Trump abandoned the JCPOA, Tehran has become increasingly frustrated with the remaining signatories to deliver economic benefits as promised by the agreement.

The US has threatened Iran with further “sanctions and isolation.” In response, the Iranians have promised to scale back commitments every 60 days unless the UK, China, France, Germany and Russia protect the country from American sanctions.

The Chinese foreign ministry blamed American “unilateral bullying” that it described as a “worsening tumor.” Russia also blamed the US and pledged to salvage the Iran deal.France is European efforts to save the JCPOA.

Such is the might of the US with its deep capital markets, the global reach of its law and the power of the dollar that hardly anyone is doing business with Iran. The Europeans have to fulfill their part of the deal out of fear of retribution from the US. European companies with American shareholders and large exports to the US cannot dare to displease Washington, DC. Even a rising giant like with refineries designed for Iranian crude has ceased importing all oil from Iran.

Why Does the Iran Nuclear Deal Matter?

Over 60% of Iran’s population is. About 22% of them between 15 and 29 are unemployed. Sanctions are hitting them the hardest. Protests have persisted since 2018 as jobs vanish, corruption persists and the economy nosedives. Tehran has responded with repression and claims the regime has launched the “worst” crackdown in a decade. This has made hardliners like Bolton argue that the US must keep up the pressure until a combination of internal and external revolution brings about regime change. As many point out, Bolton is operating from the old Bush playbook for Iraq, of which he was one of the authors.

Most believe that Iran largely abided by JCPOA despite Trump pulling out of the deal. Iranians were hoping that the Europeans, Chinese, Russians and Indians would stand up to Washington and do business with them. This did not transpire. So, as per some analysts, the Iranians have decided to hit back. They believe Iran is using an aggressive gambit that includes attacks on oil tankers, shooting down American drones and ratcheting up the geopolitical temperature. The recent seizing of tankers and arresting of spies is part of that gambit, which puts upward pressure on the price of oil. Unsurprisingly, Iran denies being a provocateur and argues that it is acting merely in self-defense.

The most recent developments suggest that Iran is sending Washington a clear signal. The US-Iran conflict is expensive not only for Iran but also for the US and others. Like any deal, the JCPOA was imperfect, but it established an overdue détente in a highly volatile region. Trump decided this was not the best path forward for the US and pulled out of the nuclear deal. Now, it is back to confrontation à la the days after Iran’s 1979 .

With rising tensions, it remains to be seen if the JCPOA will stand. Iran’s nosediving economy might collapse completely. War could break out in the region. Additionally, a global power struggle might ensue. Russia and China could back Iran while Europe and India grudgingly side with the US. And in a world where the price of oil still matters, the collapse of the nuclear deal could tip a sluggish global economy into recession if not depression. The stakes could not be higher.

*[360° series is our signature feature where you get context and insights from around the world. Read more about the situation with Iran below.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Post-Iran Nuclear Deal: What’s Going On? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After the US designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization in April, Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strategic international waterway essential for the passage of oil tankers from a number of Gulf countries that would have few and, in some cases, no other options for trade. In May, waivers on oil trade that the US had issues to eight countries, including Japan, South Korea, India and China, which had all been dependent on Iran for their supply, expired. With Iran remaining China’s primary oil supplier, after the expiration of waivers, Beijing defiantly refused to comply with the ban and engaged in smuggling activities. On July 23, the , Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., and its chief executive, Youmin Li, over the violations, but some officials have debated not enforcing the ban on China or issuing a new waiver.

In May, Norwegian, Emirati and Saudi off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. While no one claimed responsibility, the United States and the UAE alleged that a “state actor” was behind those attacks. The incident was followed by a series of attacks by the Yemeni Iran-backed Houthi separatists and Iran-backed Iraqi militias against Saudi oil rigs, as well as civilian and military sites. While the war of words between Iran and the US escalated, more ships were attacked in June, including a Japanese tanker that was damaged by two “” as Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was visiting Iran to mediate between Washington and Tehran.

This time, the United States, Saudi Arabia and others directly blamed Iran for the attacks, and the US produced evidence allegedly pointing to Iran’s participation in the operation that damaged the ships. The war of words between Tehran and Washington escalated, as did . By July, Iran claimed credit for a downed US drone, struck down in international airspace, as released by the Pentagon shows. The US responded with a on the IRGC unit responsible for the operation, disabling its rockets. It also sanctioned Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal assets, and the Basij militia and other government-affiliated groups. The US also reported that it downed not one, but “provocative” Iranian drones involved in aggressive maneuvers, which Iran denied.

Undeterred

Undeterred by escalating sanctions, or even the increasing difficulties in exporting its oil, Iran resumed in the Gulf of Oman, diverting a number of tankers into its own waters, and encouraged Chinese boats to disable surveillance to facilitate smuggling. These and other episodes caused the US to up security in the region, bringing , the and to the nearby Al Udeid base in Qatar, as well as pledging 1,000 troops to keep peace in the vicinity — 500 of which have been approved for relocation to Saudi Arabia.

The US has also attempted to expedite emergency arms deliveries to its Gulf allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but for now this measure has been blocked by US Congress. Those in foreign policy circles who support the Iran nuclear deal this chain of events as a push toward war either by Iran or by the White House, which would engulf the region and mean high costs in terms of both military equipment and personnel for the US side. This self-serving narrative was crafted by the unregistered pro-regime Iranian lobby in Washington, the National Iranian American Council (), since the presenting a false dichotomy between actions by the US that would serve in Iran’s interest — or war.

The United States, for its part, has conducted itself with unusual restraint. US President Donald Trump has allegedly called off a military strike against IRGC targets because of the concern for human casualties. So far, the United States has failed to retaliate in any way for the repeated attacks against US targets in Iraq, constraining itself to combatting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Yemen, providing the Saudi-led coalition with logistical and intelligence assistance against the Houthis.

Likewise, despite tightening sanctions against Hezbollah, the United States has not pursued the armed group’s targets in Yemen, Africa or Latin America. It has also provided the with a supply of weapons despite the fact that Hezbollah, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government, holds a majority of seats in Lebanon’s parliament. The group is a major beneficiary of free advanced American weapons that in some case may have filtered to them via the Lebanese air force, and boasted of a number of it captured from the Iraqi army.

In this context, Iran operates with knowledge that the United States is limited in its response by several factors. The central issue at the moment is that the United States is in the midst of a hotly contested election year, in which getting involved in either a major protracted conflagration or anything that could be perceived as a step in that direction will harm the administration’s chances. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, half of Americans “in the next few years.” Yet only a want to see military action against Iran.

Other factors affecting the decision-making process include the political divide between the White House and Congress, particularly the Democrat-led House of Representatives. Furthermore, under the limelight are President Trump’s campaign promises to keep the US out of foreign conflicts and the for US military interventionism. The sensationalist nature of he 24-hour media cycle adds to an impression of impending doom, even if in reality the tensions are fairly limited in scale and duration. The drama of the US being on the brink of war has been largely created to keep the US out of the Gulf, through a mass-scale psy-op of fearmongering.

How Iran Benefits

Given this context, the announcement of the capture of US spies likewise benefits Tehran in several ways. First, as such rumors go, it speaks to some extent to the internal weakness within the country and a paranoid atmosphere fueled by frequent mass protests across Iran, and not just by opposition activists. The level of dissatisfaction with the economic situation among the wider population, the regime’s recalcitrance in addressing grievances and the expenditures of any public funding toward foreign wars, terrorism and internal corruption are destabilizing and unnerving.

Nevertheless, the situation is largely under control thanks to the lack of leadership among the main opposition, and the various fissions among different segments of the population, including non-Persian minorities — Azeri Turkis, Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds, Balochis and other ethnicities marginalized by the government — that don’t work closely with the mainstream Persian opposition.

The announcement of breaking up a foreign spy ring feeds into the regime narrative and serves to demoralize the opposition. If anyone truly believes that Americans have succeeded in recruiting agents who have penetrated the clandestine nuclear research and development program, their roundup can be perceived as a painful blow. And to everyone who has grown skeptical of such claims, it will be a reminder that the regime can arrest anyone for any reason and get away with extracting false confessions, without having to fear major consequences. Human rights sanctions against perpetrators of Iran’s domestic reign of terror have mostly eluded the regime apparatus, nor has it prevented any torture or executions.

The announced arrests and executions may also be a preemptive strike against any attempts to create an “Iranian Spring” by the Western powers. The regime should indeed be concerned.

Second, if Americans indeed had assets in Iran that were now exposed, this public announcement sends a signal to US intelligence that there was a security breach, which means that the entire CIA program in the country is possibly in danger. Also, it gives leverage to the regime to negotiate for minor concessions, depending on the value of any such assets. President Trump that this announcement was anything more than a propaganda move by Tehran. Secretary Pompeo, too, that Iran has a long history of fabricating such matters for its own benefit.

Of course, even if the CIA lost 17 assets, that will not ultimately stop future efforts at gathering intelligence, nor will it prevent the administration from pursuing tough policies against Iran if it so chooses. However, if the administration, , is on course to court a new and “better” nuclear deal with Tehran, these announcements are a different sort of signal. They may signify that the regime is looking to exchange these assets for Iranian spies imprisoned in the United States, or that it is now in possession of sensitive information about US operations against it or its own plans.

Detecting a Pattern

Even if this move is nothing more than bluster by the regime, it will contribute to the general perception that the tensions are rising, and that the United States may soon find itself on the brink of a perilous situation similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The regime has a long history of arresting ordinary protesters and activists and — after torture and humiliating Soviet-style show trials — parading them as CIA, Mossad or British intelligence spies.

In theory, this should discredit the alleged spies in the public eye. In reality, the regime is fully aware that at this point few Iranians — those who aren’t directly benefiting from close contact with the government — believe such rumors. If these people are indeed ordinary protesters, such periodic episodes signal a crackdown on dissident activity and serve to show that if people take to the streets, they will be treated as traitors and foreign spies. It also supports Tehran’s narrative that any dissent or a show of public dissatisfaction, even if not sponsored by Western powers, benefits the regime’s adversaries and, therefore, for all intents and purposes, they might as well be agents of US influence — or whoever else.

In light of the current developments, the regime has good reason to be concerned that Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran may inspire a new wave of protests over the summer, further destabilization and perhaps even defection of key members of the regime. Most recently, a number of senior IRGC officials have known to have , some only temporarily. If there is a rise in general chaos among Iranian intelligence, and if there is a fear of , this move may be signaling an internal shakedown as much as a crackdown against any mass public mobilization, like the Green Movement in 2009.

Unlike his predecessor, President Trump is highly likely to express open support for such events, which will demoralize Iran’s intelligence servieces and give support to the opposition. In order to prevent this from happening, the regime is likely to take measures to secure both its own people and take further measures to intimidate the opposition.

In other words, the announced arrests and executions may also be a preemptive strike against any attempts to create an “Iranian Spring” by the Western powers. The regime should indeed be concerned. The entire country is roiling from the economic and environmental devastation precipitated by misgovernment. Foreign involvement, such as China’s , is decidedly unwelcome. An internet crackdown and anti-Western rhetoric are seen as a hostile act by the very young Iranian population, which is increasingly secular and open to the West. Iran faces a plethora of internal problems, and going on a witch-hunt against real or imaginary spies at a time when it has limited resources to stand up to a much stronger West is a sign of desperation.

However, there is an exception to this otherwise predictable and unimpressive pattern. During the nuclear negotiations with Iran, one of the conditions presented to former President Barack Obama was the termination of intelligence activities in Iran. During the period of negotiations between 2011 and 2012 that resulted in the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which were still secret at the time, a mysterious communication breach that apparently for years led to the of a number of CIA assets in Iran and other countries.

But was it mere incompetence coupled with arrogance, or was the breach at least partly connected to a tacit political agreement? President Obama’s willingness to allow Bashar al-Assad’s massacre of civilians in Syria to continue despite his pronounced “red line,” as well as his supportive attitude to Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi’s tenure despite his at around the same time would lead one to believe that even if such an agreement was never formalized, Iran would have demanded, as a sign of good faith, that the US abandon its intelligence gathering operations in Iran and that the US intelligence agencies should quietly cease protecting their assets in the event of exposure. Exploiting a known vulnerability without taking steps to protect these assets may have been a nod as a show of good faith during the negotiations.

As a result, the . Many assets were arrested, imprisoned or executed. If the Trump administration is indeed pursuing a renegotiation of the nuclear deal, the regime may very likely make the same demands of it and announce the capture of these assets shortly before making an offer to the Trump administration that the White House cannot refuse.

Finally, it is worth noting that Iran has a number of Americans and dual nationals, accusing them of espionage, likely in an effort to broker advantageous deals during any potential negotiations. It would be a repeat of similar efforts under Obama when the regime exchanged several Americans, including The Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, for a substantial sum of money and . However, all of these individuals have been publicly named and have been arrested on individual basis while doing research or visiting family members, like Iranian-British dual national Nasreen Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been imprisoned in Iran since 2016. Iran has not claimed that they are part of a “network” taken as a group.

Paper Tiger

This pattern leads one to believe that those taken by the regime are regular Iranians who are less likely to attract international attention and campaign to secure their release than prisoners with Western connections. What does this ultimately mean for the United States?

First, Iran is largely a paper tiger: There is no need to fear a confrontation. Its military capabilities are vastly inferior to the US. Its economy, devastated by corruption has little to offer to the United States. Furthermore, the regime has a history of being manipulative and deceptive. So far, all of the efforts to make a deal with it resulted in and . Therefore, a pursuit of a new nuclear agreement will likely yield more of the same and is not worth the potential devastation of the region and loss of trust by regional allies.

Second, Iran has used intelligence as a weapon of pressure against the opposition, as well as countries abroad. It has accused dissidents of working for the West while inserting in Western institutions and weaponizing the around the world to cover for terrorist activities and assassination attempts against dissidents. US officials dealing with Iran should openly confront Foreign Minister Javad Zarif or other visiting officials instead of letting them speak freely to US media, largely unchallenged. Iran presents plenty of opportunities to expose its record of deception, manipulation and false and hypocritical accusations.

Finally, no negotiations with Iran are possible until every American and other Western national is released. That should be a starting point, not a sideshow that Iran could use to exercise further leverage. Likewise, if the alleged captives are indeed spies, Iran should act as any civilized country in such a situation and at the very least publicize their names. In the past, it has arrested activists and scientists, accusing of them espionage in an attempt to recruit them to carry out the regime’s agenda, but the information eventually became known to their governments and to the public at large.

This cynical ploy that is meant to keep everyone wondering what Iran will do next is unacceptable and should be forcefully rejected. Here is an opportunity for the international community to call out Iran for its horrendous abuse of the legal system to come up with baseless accusations against both its own citizens and foreigners, making a mockery of the courts. Regardless of the identity of these people and the cause for their arrest, the fact that they are being tried on such serious charges and have been sentenced to death, likely after torture and false confessions, should not go unchallenged.

It is time to show that Iran is playing games with the West largely through bluff and exploitation of greed, false expectations and cowardice rather than because it has anything advantageous to bring to the table. Its corrupt system would not enrich investors. Its oil is of poor quality and needs to be refined externally. Members of the business community connected to the regime are in all sorts of that may violate international law and so cannot be trusted. It is time to realize that Iran has nothing to offer except chaos and threats, and be put it in its place.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Iran’s Spy Scandal Exposes the Regime’s Insecurity appeared first on 51�Թ�.

First of all, the guy tells a ripping yarn. While critics of US policy drone on about complex agreements with opaque acronyms, Trump boils down the problem to a TV episode with a ticking clock. The bad guys shot down a US drone. The good guys prepare to strike back. But the greatest president of all decides at the last moment — with only 10 minutes to spare — to take his finger off the trigger and save the day. Or, at least, that’s how The Donald tells it.

Trump also presents himself as all things to all people. He threatened Iran with war. But he also promised to restart negotiations with the country. He opposed the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration, among others, patiently negotiated. But he offered (however implausibly) to put a better one in its place. He decided to rescind his authorization of airstrikes on Iranian infrastructure. But he also went ahead with cyberattacks and additional economic sanctions, all of which add up to a war with Iran in but name.

What should ordinarily be a defect — Trump’s rapid oscillation in positions — becomes a virtue in this era of instantaneous news. The country hangs on the man’s every tweet. Which Trump will emerge the winner in the battle among the president’s many avatars: Killer Trump, Dealmaker Trump, Madman Trump, Joker Trump? The man keeps you guessing, which is an indispensable element in this age of infotainment.

In the end, Trump has successfully made politics all about himself. It’s not just that he has asserted executive privilege over the legislative branch. It’s not even that he’s ignored the advice of his cabinet and concentrated decision-making power in his own hands. It’s worse than that.

When it comes down to a potential war with Iran — or one with North Korea or Venezuela or China — even Trump’s opponents are left rooting for… Trump. They hope that, in the end, the better angels — or at least the more opportunistic ones — of the president’s nature will prevail over the lesser angels of National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The only person who can stop Trump, in other words, is Trump. This is not democratic politics. This is the politics of the man on the white horse, of the caudillo, of the generalissimo. It’s bad enough that Trump dominates politics. He also dominates the political imagination. 

The Triumph of Conflict

Barack Obama is an intellectual. Even when he waxed martial, he did so in an intellectual way, like when he supported the just war doctrine in his Nobel Peace Prize address. Obama was judicious to a fault. He went back and forth on issues as he weighed the various pros and cons. He didn’t push ahead with a program unless he thought it had a very good chance of success and widespread support.

Trump is another creature altogether. He doesn’t think through problems. He thinks around them. He keeps the nation updated on the various unformed ideas in his head on a regular basis. The result of this process is endless conflict. There’s the conflict of positions inside Trump. But there are also the conflicts that Trump generates with everyone around him — the appointees that he’s always on the verge of firing, the institutions of government, large swaths of the American population, a variety of international institutions and virtually every major country of the world.

In the same way that Marx turned Hegel on his head, Trump has turned Marx on his head. The president wages class struggle virtually every minute against his enemies, who are essentially the 99% (of the United States and of the world).

Of course, there’s another way of looking at this triumph of conflict. For all his invocations of a golden age of the past, Donald Trump is actually a futurist. Consider, for example, these lines from “,” written by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti:

“We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman… Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”

Trump might have a personal aversion to military conflict. He opted out of the Vietnam War. He once , to Howard Stern, that having sex with lots of women, and risking sexually transmitted diseases, was somehow more courageous than going into battle. He has occasionally voiced skepticism about US military engagements overseas, such as the Iraq War.

But the man pursues all sorts of other wars. He has declared war on undocumented Americans. He is battling Congress over various investigations (and, occasionally, legislation as well). He has declared trade wars against allies and adversaries alike. He continues to struggle against Hillary Clinton, however ludicrous that might seem.

And, of course, he has bombed Syria (twice), considered air strikes against Iran and North Korea, contemplated military action against Venezuela, and blocked congressional efforts to end US military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Like his futurist forebears, Trump is aggressive, misogynistic, hyper-patriotic. Governance, for him, is a violent assault on the forces of the unknown in order to force them to bow before none other than Trump himself. As Marinetti once wrote about art in his manifesto, Trump approaches politics as if it were “nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice.”

Marinetti penned his futurist manifesto in 1909. His movement applauded Italy’s entry into World War I. The futurists who survived that war would eventually rally around the political figure who best embodied the movement’s fascination with militarism, masculinity, and modernity. In their support for Benito Mussolini, the futurists morphed into fascists.

There but for the grace of America’s remaining democratic institutions goes Trump. 

Countering Trump

Fact-checking Donald Trump is truly a Herculean effort: As in the Augean stables, there’s always more bullshit to deal with. And the fact-checkers are largely preaching to the converted. Itemizing all of Trump’s mischaracterizations of Iran, for instance, is like pointing out all the ways that “Star Trek” departs from the rules of verisimilitude. Fans don’t care. And everyone else doesn’t listen.

Nor is it possible to out-Trump Trump. He can’t be outshouted. He can’t be out-insulted. He can’t be shamed into doing anything, for he lacks shame, and he can’t be goaded either, since he bristles at any attempt to push him in one direction or another.

Some world leaders have opted for flattery. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, for instance, has gone out of his way to praise Trump’s leadership, statesmanship and all-around sagacity. That hasn’t prevented the US president from squeezing South Korea hard on trade and the financial contributions that Seoul makes to the maintenance of US troops on the Korean Peninsula. And Trump hasn’t pulled off an agreement with North Korea yet. So, flattery will only get you so far.

What’s left, for those who can’t stomach flattery, is storytelling. Trump, remember, tells a compelling story. Those who want to prevent a war with Iran have to tell a better story, without technical terms, without acronyms, without the usual inside-the-Beltway vocabulary. Such a story should do an end run around Trump’s reduction of politics to what’s going on inside his own head — by not mentioning Trump at all.

It’s also not a story about Iran. A deep vein of suspicion  the American public about the country that held US hostages for 444 days four decades ago. As , most Americans simply don’t care about the fate of Iranians.

Rather, this must be a story of what has made America (occasionally) great — Richard Nixon shaking hands with Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, George W. Bush setting up an AIDS relief program in Africa, Republican senators (other than John McCain) supporting rapprochement with Vietnam. It’s the story that puts a Republican face on diplomacy. It’s a story and a set of visuals that should attract support from precisely the base that speaks to Trump. It’s a story that would not look out of place as a PSA on Fox News.

To prevent a war with Iran, you can’t fight Trump’s fire and fury with an equal but opposite fire and fury. But you can just possibly win with a ripping yarn about peace.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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