"Take me back to . . . . when I could talk about the Soviets"

Edward Luttwack has an interesting piece in Foreign Policy this month . . . interesting given his Cold War-era publication record. A quick summary so that you don't have to read his collected works yourself: "We're not spending enough money to arm against the Soviets - close all the schools; close all the hospitals; conscript all the males over age 15 and melt down the statue of liberty - we could use the extra copper for munitions."

Luttwack's new article (ironically) argues that the U.S. should adopt a more restrained form of empire - one fashioned on the Byzantine model. He chooses Byzantium over Rome, characterizing the latter as a system based on "ruthless expansion, domination and total war," which he insists bears no resemblance to the U.S. All this without batting a rhetorical eyelash. Does he lack the imagination to picture what "expansion, domination and total war" would resemble in the post-Enlightenment period? Are Alexander's adventures in India really so different from those of Kermit Roosevelt in Iran? Maybe Bush didn't play the fiddle during Hurricane Katrina but the comparisons I've read of Rome and the US have been relatively convincing . . .

Luttwack's 1982 article "Why we need more waste, fraud and mismanagement in the Pentagon" basically bemoaned the 'micro-managers' in the defense community who were arguing that current levels of defense spending might become unsustainable and eventually pose a security risk (which of course is exactly what brought down the Soviets). One might argue (very convincingly) that the over-production of defense materiel by the superpowers contributed to many of the security challenges in the world today. These include the obvious - the black market weapons trade, nuclear proliferation, civil conflicts in the developing world, etc.

But I would argue this over-production also created private industry defense giants, whose mad scramble for self-preservation in the post-Cold War environment of budgetary restraint drove them to offload deadly weapons on oppressive regimes like a drug dealer handing out crack samples. These unscrupulous practices have created a globe of militarized states with regimes so paranoid they threaten to drag their neighbors into major conflict on a fairly regular basis. Had Luttwack gotten his way in 1982 Lichtenstein would probably have invaded Belgium and perusing Orwell's classics would be like curling up with a Jane Austen novel.

Long story short - Luttwack now seems to be arguing for restraint (the sort of traditional realist kind: carry a big stick - preferably one with a nuclear warhead attached to it).

Top Ten Ways to Convince Muslims the US is on a Crusade

An unbelievable piece from Chris Rodda at the Huffington Post. Below is just #9 - read the whole post here:


9. Have top U.S. military officers appear in a video showing just how Christian the Pentagon is

In addition to inadvertently providing propaganda material to our enemies, public endorsements of Christianity by U.S. military leaders can also cause concern among our Muslim allies.

When Air Force Maj. Gen. Pete Sutton decided in 2004 to appear in uniform at the Pentagon in the Campus Crusade for Christ Christian Embassy promotional video, a video full of government officials and high ranking military officers saying things like "we're the aroma of Jesus Christ," he probably didn't give any thought to the potential ramifications of publicly endorsing this fundamentalist religious organization. But, not long after appearing in this video, Sutton was assigned to the U.S. European Command, Ankara, Turkey, as Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation. Here's what happened, according to the Department of Defense Inspector General's report on the Christian Embassy video investigation.

"Maj Gen Sutton testified that while in Turkey in his current duty position, his Turkish driver approached him with an article in the Turkish newspaper 'Sabah.' That article featured a photograph of Maj Gen Sutton in uniform and described him as a member of a radical fundamentalist sect. The article in the online edition of Sabah also included still photographs taken from the Christian Embassy video. Maj Gen Sutton's duties in Ankara included establishing good relations with his counterparts on the Turkish General Staff. Maj Gen Sutton testified that Turkey is a predominantly Muslim nation, with religious matters being kept strictly separate from matters of state. He said that when the article was published in Sabah, it caused his Turkish counterparts concern and a number of Turkish general officers asked him to explain his participation in the video."


In addition to the Christian Embassy video, MRFF has uncovered a slew of other videos of uniformed military personnel endorsing fundamentalist Christian organizations and military ministries, many of which have missions that include proselytizing Muslims. These videos are easily found on the internet, providing plenty of potential propaganda material for recruiting by extremists.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/top-ten-ways-to-convince_b_291308.html

Saudi Businessmen and Global Warming . . .

The FT has been really great at covering this long-running Saudi billionaire's feud. Today's article points out just how ridiculous these families really are. In addition to being generally despicable they're also clearly a major source of global warming - is someone saving them a seat at the UN Climate Change Summit?

Here's an excerpt.

"The High Court eased the order to allow the embattled billionaire $4m spending money a year after a colourful hearing in which Mr Sanea rejected fraud allegations and outlined living expenses including a private zoo and utility bills of $800,000 a month."

"He spends $800,000 on electricity, gas, telephone, water and satellite bills every month," Mr Beazley told the judge."

How about not ordering so much pay-per-view porn? There's a start . . .
Here's the whole article.

My article on negotiations with Israel

Beyond Muscle: Using Financial Leverage for Middle East Peace

In late August, the U.S. and Israeli governments appeared to have settled on a grand strategy to advance Middle East peace, one that traded a tougher U.S. stance on Iran for freezing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. But subsequent reports on plans for additional Israeli settlement construction and announcements by Tehran outlining its terms for talks at a September 9th, meeting of the P5+1 (that's the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) working group, indicate that the specific details of a bargain are still far from settled.

As negotiations on Israeli settlements commence in this environment of uncertainty, the Obama administration will need all the bargaining chips it can marshal. The key is to find a form of leverage that is costly enough to impact Israeli behavior without threatening their security and is also relatively cheap for the administration to apply. Defense "offsets" — incentives granted by private companies to facilitate the purchase of military goods — satisfy all these conditions, and may be especially effective in the struggle for Middle East peace.

Like most industrialized nations, U.S. defense manufacturers routinely grant offsets to purchasing governments, usually in the form of agreements to co-produce specific weapons or invest in commercial enterprises. It has long been U.S. practice not to allow offsets on products and services purchased with U.S. military assistance funds — except when it comes to Egypt and Israel. The billions of dollars in additional defense assistance that Israel has secured through this legislative loophole may prove to be a significant source of leverage in the Middle East peace process.

For example, Israel is hoping to pen a deal for $20 billion worth of U.S.-built F-35s that could include offsets of nearly $10 billion — that's in accordance with Israeli policy requiring offsets of 48% of the overall contract value. These offsets would accrue mostly to the Israeli defense department, possibly via agreements that Lockheed Martin would purchase Israeli-built computer components for the assembled planes. Israeli press reports suggest the offset provisions are holding up the deal, signaling Israel's continued pursuit of offsets even in its most strategic procurement decisions. These funds represent a significant tool the Obama administration should use to press Israel on the settlement issue.

There is precedent for trying security assistance to Israeli settlement policy. In the 1990s Congress frequently reduced multi-billion dollar loan guarantee programs by the amount the Israeli government spent on settlements in the occupied territories. This logic applies to offsets as well, since they may indirectly finance projects that support settlements by providing Israel with financial flexibility to commit additional resources to build more settlements or by funneling the profits from offsets into acquiring controversial crowd-control devices and other materials that many countries (including the United States) refuse to export to Israel.

Egypt's offset history may also represent a bargaining chip in negotiations with Israel. Although official Egyptian policy is not to request offsets from the U.S., partly due to major cost overruns and inefficiencies in previous offset agreements, industry trade groups such as Epicos report that Egyptian authorities regularly demand "discounts" and "concessions." If Israeli offsets are threatened, officials may demand that similar reforms be implemented with regard to Egyptian procurement processes, hoping to make the process too politically costly for the United States to implement.

This presents the administration with a win-win situation. Slashing offsets does not restrict the principle funds promised to Israel after Camp David, and it represents a reform to the defense procurement process that would prevent the controversial transfer of U.S. defense jobs to the Israeli defense sector. If the Israelis express willingness to move on the settlement issue rather than forego offset benefits, a more viable peace strategy will result. If, on the other hand, the Israelis will not revise their settlement policy, the United States can simply end these subsidies to their defense industry. Under this latter scenario the U.S. would also restrain "concessions" granted to the Egyptian defense establishment, in keeping with the equilibrium established under Camp David. The Egyptian military is a powerful political player implicated in a wide spectrum of abuses — weakening their institutional power would hardly be a difficult sell.

The U.S. has important and legally binding relationships with both Israel and Egypt. Offsets, however, are neither mandated by treaties nor are they justifiable on security or economic grounds. Israel's acute desire to obtain the F-35 and its refusal to accept settlement restrictions gives the U.S. significant space for negotiation that might not emerge again in the foreseeable future. In the normally labyrinthine world of Middle East politics, obscure contract details may in fact provide a clear source of leverage in the struggle to secure progress toward peace.

Shana Marshall is a PhD. student at the University of Maryland and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Taliban issue little blue book "Code of Conduct"

"The Taliban in Afghanistan has issued a book laying down a code of conduct for its fighters.

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the book which further indicates that Mullah Omar, the movement's leader, wants to centralise its operations.

The book, with 13 chapters and 67 articles, lays out what one of the most secretive organisations in the world today, can and cannot do.

It talks of limiting suicide attacks, avoiding civilian casualties and winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the local civilian population."

It doesn't outline Mao's three levels of warfare - but aside from that it's essentially the same "hearts and minds" content that we see in the COIN manuals of most Western countries.

Al Jazeera has the whole story here.

In Italy, wedding bouquet throw crashes plane

A Western cultural corollary to the gun fire that usually follows similar ceremonies in 'traditional' societies. Maybe brides should just start firing pistols instead. Article here.

New Info on (no longer) secret CIA program

NYTimes has story, "CIA had plan to assassinate Al-Qaeda leaders."

How to be tough on Egypt AND Israel

The JPost has an opinion article from last week that suggests the Obama Administration is being too easy on Egypt (I won't even address the author's suggestion that the Administration is being tough on Israel, which is patently false and a ludicrous suggestion). But, the idea that the US should be tougher on Egypt is a valid one, and since the only way to do this is by withholding military assistance funds, this would necessitate cutting back assistance to Israel as well. The Camp David Accords locked in US military aid to Israel and Egypt at a ratio of 3:2, and if we could legitimate changing one, it would take us a long way in legitimating a change in the other as well.

The JPost author suggests this ratio may not reflect actual aid to both countries, indicating that the amount Egypt receives may be larger and what Israel receives may be less. Although he is probably correct in magnitude he is incorrect in direction. Israel probably receives about twice as much in actual dollars as the ratio suggests. This is because (in contrast to other countries that receive FMF - foreign military financing funds) Israel is allowed to demand 'offsets' of its spending on military procurement - offsets that frequently exceed 100% of the actual contract value. The US Bureau of Industry and Security sites more than $2 billion in offsets from US contractors alone between 1993 and 2006 (although their information comes from reports submitted by the contractors - not exactly what I would consider an objective source of reliable information). I'd estimate it at about twice that much - since the 7 or so prime contractors that provide about 80% of US offsets have an interest in minimizing the appearance of their overall impact, both on the domestic US defense supplier base and on upsetting political equilibria in conflict zones. Much of these offsets are fed into Israel's domestic defense capability either through coproduction, licensing agreements or technology transfers.

If we started adding this into the Camp David ratio we could probably withold some FMF from both Israel AND Egypt - now that's being tough.

Britain halts some arms exports to Israel in response to Gaza conflict

. . . . . yeah, like 5 out of almost 200 contracts: not exactly a penalty. Times Online has the story here.

Apparently the shelf-life of American Exceptionalism is . . . . really long

In the interest of full disclosure, I never read Gelb's "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy". From the reviews/excerpts such as this one in the NY Review of Books, it's the standard dose of ahistorical American Exceptionalism pumped up with some pro-intervention 'cooperative security' niceties. The proposals reflect the fact that Gelb once had access to official military and intelligence information (the sort that imbues its readers with the false sense of supremacy that has led so many policy-makers to intervene in conflicts they think can be easily won - roughly the idea that all the world's problems not only resemble nails but that we have stockpiles of such technologically advanced hammers that we cannot possibly fail).

The author picks out some good phrases, such as:

"Gelb thinks that Obama is situated to deliver an impressive display of war that adds heft to diplomacy, and of diplomacy that reconciles us to war. The reason Obama can do this is that "to Arabs and Iranians, America is still number one."

One assumes of course, that Gelb wrote this when the wars (both in Afghanistan and Iraq) were both going well - although I can never remember a time when conditions in both were concurrently improving. Although the Iraq War (by most accounts) seems to be improving, the situation in Afghanistan certainly has not. If anything, Obama is in a position to deliver the rather hopeless message that most observers already understand, mainly that US diplomacy has suffered significantly b/c its war-fighting ability has been proven ineffective in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus there's nothing with which to back-up that diplomacy.

Not to mention Gelb's rather baseless observation that "to Arabs and Iranians, America is still number one." We may indeed still act as if we're number one, which will fool most of the people most of the time, but other players are stepping into the small vacuums that are popping up throughout the globe (most notably the efforts of countries like Qatar (in Lebanon), Syria (between Turkey and Armenia) and others in presenting themselves as alternatives to US-allied peace brokers Egypt and Saudi Arabia).

Gelb's book is Ikenberry-esque in that he too cautions against the US tendency for isolationism (esp. after periods of such spectacular foreign policy failures). But the review follows up its examination of the book with some excerpts from Gelb's previous rhetoric on US foreign policy, which make his claims to 'common sense' incredibly suspect:

"In a discussion moderated by Senator Daniel P. Moynihan some twenty-five years ago, Leslie Gelb said with a genial irony that covert wars brought no real impairment of democracy: "The fact of the matter is that almost any covert operation that might be considered controversial is going to be debated publicly." This was said when the US was supplying arms to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, and mining the harbors of that country; the facts had lately come to public view, but the facts were not discussed until discovered by accident. The same held true with the American policy on torture under Bush and Cheney, which spread from Guantánamo to prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gelb, in 1984, was challenged by Morton Halperin:

The critical moment for debating a military intervention is before it begins. Clearly, once you help people start a war there are weighty arguments in favor of continuing to support them.

Senator Moynihan also disagreed with Gelb:

I suggest that in the United States we openly discuss a very limited number of such operations, that the far greater portion are not discussed, but are hermetically sealed.

Moynihan plainly thought this a bad thing for constitutional democracy.

Gelb had the last word, in a way; but it was a puzzling last word: "I disagree," he said, with

the proposition that we ought not to interfere in the internal politics of other societies. I believe that is exactly what foreign policy is. All foreign policy is the extension of one's internal policies into the internal politics of another nation.

The subject was, to repeat, the arming of the contras in Nicaragua, but it was also the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The comment sheds considerable light as well on Gelb's eagerness to continue pressure in the Middle East in the form of military and covert operations."

"Shock and Audit" MJ Report on Defense Budget

The Defense Dept. never ceases to amaze. After roughly 7 hours of tense discussion on defense budgetary priorities (tense b/c I had the gall to question whether the actual goal of defense spending was to preserve human life, in which case it has on most counts been a miserable failure) I come across this Mother Jones gem. Even after an afternoon spent delving into future budget predictions that basically have us burning excess defense articles for fuel after the entire country goes bankrupt and we've descended into anarchy, this stuff is still shocking.

Like that the cost overruns in our defense budget exceed China's total defense budget by a factor of three - that's right, all the myriad discrepancies between what Lockheed tells us that plane will cost and what it actually ends up charging us all amounts to three times China's total defense budget!! And yes, nice try, but that is an accurate figure - China analysts believe this to be a reliable indicator of their activity - not that I could say the same for our auditors, since the "black budget" and the VA budget and lots of other little budgetary pieces never make it into our official defense budget anyway. Our defense spending, on the other hand, comes in at around $850 billion. That's about the size of four medium-sized country GDPs (like Israel+Norway+Denmark+Chile).

And, official projections for the F-35 (those are the projections that usually understate actual costs by about 20% or so) put those program costs at over $1 trillion - about the size of the national deficit. So, I hope we can dismantle some of these planes and distill some of their constituent elements for basics like food and fuel . . . . cause if we keep letting pathological organizations and defense contractors make all the budget decisions we're halfway to hell in an aircraft carrier.

MEP article on Syria and Financial Crisis

Better link to MEP article . . .

Workshop Intriques: Weapons Espionage

Saw Issandr Al-Amrani's recent post about the JPost article on Egyptian military's purchase of Russian air defense systems. Since the Russians are unlikely to accept anything less than hard currency from the Egyptians for payment it begs the question of where Egypt would get the money for such a purchase, the price of which would undoutedly be very high since the S-400 is presumed to be the best air defense system available.

Well, the logical answer is that they would use US military aid (the Foreign Military Financing Funds that the Egyptians still get every year as an incentive for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979). But, would the US sign on to Egyptian purchases of Russian weaponry, given that there is some built in expectation that the Egyptians would use that money to purchase US defense material and at the very least would not buy material from the Russians?

A possibility I never considered (although now it seems entirely logical) is that the Americans would actually support such an Egyptian-Russian transaction on the premise that the Egyptians would give the Americans a few of the SAMs so they could use them in field tests (as opposed to having to resort to simulations and other computer generated tests. This would be especially beneficial to the US given that many of the countries that have bought these Russian weapons are those likely to be engaged in confrontation with the US in the future.

A former air force guy told me this is pretty common practice, but still something I didn't consider before, and introduces interesting motivations and mechanisms to questions/discussions of patterns of arms sales and military assistance.

Syrian reaction to success of Hariri/Future Party

This response sounds pretty reasonable to me (basically the Syrians concede that even if the pro-Syrian opposition would have won much of the world would have isolated the new Lebanese regime - a fact driven home even more by the fallout after the re-election of Ahmadinijad and Biden's statements during his earlier visit to Lebanon).

Nonetheless, the fact that the elections were peaceful and there were no (to my knowledge) accusations of Syrian interference, this might be a good time to step us talks between the US and Syria. Granted, not interfering was probably in the interests of the Syrian regime, which is embroiled in it's own domestic problems ranging from managing Iraqi refugees to riding out the economic downturn. But it's still another step by Damascus in a long series (not reacting to either the Israeli bombing of a supposed nuclear facility last year or the US cross-border bombing raid, intelligence sharing in the wake of 9-11 (yes, snubbed by the Bush Administration), etc.)

These steps seem to me to garner (at the absolute least) the end of US economic sanctions, which are completely meaningless and only serve to symbolically isolate the regime, in addition to the end of US efforts to bock Syria's ascension to the WTO.

I would say that even the most reserved regime would be losing patience with US efforts to isolate the country, and that Syria may be looking for an opportunity to demonstrate it's regional importance (and opportunities abound: Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc.). This would be a sad reversal of the current trajectory. One can only hope that Mitchell et al are cooking up something to take to Damascus in the near future . . . .

Dubai reigns in real estate oligarchs

An FT article on the merger of several partially state-owned real estate development firms in Dubai says the move is a "decision to merge the real estate entities . . . to break down the business empires of his [Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum] lieutenants." One can only hope that Sheikh Issa [real estate developer and part-time torture connoisseur] gets his comeuppance as part of this deal. It's a distant second to the jail term he should be serving, but it's probably all that one could hope for in a country run by a monarchy.

50 Individuals in India control 20% of country's GDP

I think this is probably the highest concentration of wealth on the globe; FT has the story here.

US Ambassador to Syria

US will appoint ambassador to Syria soon - about time! Story from AFP here.

NPR: Syria and Iraq Revive Business Ties

Great info from Syria experts Landis and Harling from ICG . . .

US-UAE Nuclear Deal

The US-UAE Nuclear Deal: Turning the Straight of Hormuz into a Nuclear Tijuana?

Somehow government bureaucracies manage to suck all the intrigue out of their reports, turning would-be political thrillers into sterile dossiers full of euphemisms and obscure acronyms. The US Bureau of Industry and Security, for example, produces a monthly “Major Case” list that with a little spicing up might draw in some readers from the ranks of the government foreign policy elite. This would be a great advantage since the Bush Administration officials who signed a deal to build a nuclear reactor in the UAE seem to have missed the fact that the small Gulf nation is a major transshipment point for illicit trade with Iran, the international community’s current non-proliferation cause célèbre. The Emirates is mentioned in ten of the department’s pending cases for May 2009: nine of these for acting as a way station for shipments of sensitive technologies and dual-use items to Iran (destination number ten is Iraq, not exactly a comforting anomaly). The agreement may be a good way of rewarding the UAE for not joining its neighbors Oman and Qatar in seeking a unilateral rapprochement with Iran and bypassing the US in regional peace initiatives (moves that not only brought the two gulf nations closer to Syria but also weakened the credibility of former regional heavyweights and US-allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia). But is nuclear technology an appropriate carrot in a region that IAEA Chief Muhammad El-Baradei last week called a “ticking bomb”? The problem, El-Baradei insists, is with the current NPT regime, which has allowed upwards of 20 countries to develop civilian nuclear programs that could be weaponized in relatively short order. One part of re-dressing this failure, he told the UK Guardian, is to “ensure that the gaps that might exist for misuse of that technology is plugged.” It seems this 11th hour Bush deal has the potential to make the UAE one of the biggest “gaps,” turning the Straight of Hormuz into a nuclear smuggling thoroughfare.
There is no hard evidence that the governing royals are implicated in these BIS smuggling cases, but there is no real evidence to the contrary either. Oman and Qatar, both of whom have strong political and economic ties with Iran, do not appear in the case log at all, challenging the supposition that the UAE’s proximity to Iran makes it prone to abuse by privateers. And the UAE has long been criticized for its de facto policy of allowing cheap imports from Asia to be relabeled in the UAE to take advantage of the Arab Free Trade Area, a policy that the regime’s allies no doubt benefit from quite handsomely. The institutions that have grown up to accommodate and facilitate these smuggling rings will be difficult to dismantle, and may only be driven further underground by government efforts to do so. This may press many smugglers and traffickers of the more mundane variety to seek out opportunities to work in higher-value markets such as those for nuclear technologies. The UAE surely has legitimate security concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, but if used within the legal bounds of the US deal, the civilian technology involved in this transfer would not magically make them impervious to an attack. They would have to use this technology transfer as a starting point to engage in their own clandestine nuclear weapons program, a policy contradiction made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the UAE is not exactly strapped for energy resources as it sits on nearly 100 billion barrels of oil.
Although the deal was concluded by the Bush Administration, it must still be approved by Congress, which requires the Obama Administration to submit the deal for consideration. Under different circumstances the UAE case might be strong: it contributed to establishing an IAEA administered nuclear fuel bank, an important step in removing state-control of nuclear fuel; it is a strong US-ally and it has invested heavily in alternative energies. However, recent events caution against the deal. Particularly notable is the gruesome 45-minute tape that shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the UAE Crown Prince, torturing a grain merchant accused of pilfering $5,000 worth of product. Although disturbing, the real smoking gun of the tape is the presence of a uniformed Emirati police officer who actually takes part in the torture. If the legal arms of the state are under such complete tutelage of the royal family, is it not reasonable to assume that many of the smugglers are as well? The Wall Street Journal reported that both Westinghouse and General Electric are vying for the reactor contract. GE for one has substantial financial interests tied up with the UAE Royals, including a recently launched partnership with Mubadala Development Company, a venture capital group backed by the Crown Prince and his full-brothers including, you guessed it, Sheikh Issa from the torture tapes. For these and a host of other reasons, the US deal is unlikely to garner the Obama Administration much respect from the Arab world outside the Emirates, which is to say about 99% of the region’s population.
Regional realities and the lessons of history also advise against the deal. Many states have expressed plans to establish civilian nuclear programs, including Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. If the US aids the UAE in their program, what is to stop the rest of the region from demanding similar concessions in exchange for cooperation on regional peace deals and other joint efforts? The fact that these states may not be openly pursuing weaponized versions of these programs is of little comfort, especially given the tendency for regional political realities to shift. And by “shift” I do not mean peaceful leadership changeover so much as the US tendency to supply a given strongman with sufficient means to exterminate millions of people only to discover some years down the road that the individual has become politically unpalatable. Implementing such policy reversals once the region has been nuclearized will make disarming Saddam Hussein look like a leisurely stroll in the dessert. Crude continental balance-of-power politics once compelled France to supply sensitive nuclear assistance to Israel, Pakistan and Egypt and led Italy and Germany to assist Iraq with its program while the British supplied dual-use items; unconfirmed cases include German assistance to the apartheid government in South Africa, and Italian assistance to Argentina. This menace of regional tensions is again implicated in the case of the UAE, partly due to Bush-era tactics that divided the region into those who were “with us” or “with the terrorists.” However this time the balancing takes place in a global environment made infinitely more complex by previous generations of proliferation. Sandwiched between Iran and Saudi Arabia, will the Emiratis prove more reliable non-proliferators than the states of Western Europe? I give it roughly a snowball’s chance in Dubai.

Reading Beyond the Lines

Political Science, and in particular international relations, can be a dodgy subject because practitioners often deal in documents or sources that are less than reliable. These then get picked up by other sources and after a few references are so lost in the chain of evidence that few people think to question their legitimacy.

For example, just reading a story on Syria from the JPost that includes the following "citations":

"Syria's actions are evidence of the reality of a Middle East Cold War"

Anytime someone uses the word "reality" in close proximity to some incredibly complex historical phenomenon like "Cold War" that's being transferred to a different regional and temporal context it makes me a little skeptical

The rest of the article contains the following appeals to evidence, without citation or significant elaboration. All these are meant as condemnations of the Obama Administration's recent efforts to engage with Syria, but when compared to the policies/practices of other countries in the region (esp. US allies like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) they just read like hypocritical exercises in shaping the opinions of policy-makers and issue publics.

"it is well known" (regarding the domiciling of Hamas and IJ leaders in Damascus, which is true, but to suggest that allowing Khalid Meshaal to reside in Damascus somehow makes Syria unfit for engagement is ridiculous)

"reports have surfaced" (on Syrian construction of a biological weapons facility)

"It is known" (about Syrian stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin)

"It is thought by Western governments" (about a biological warfare program)

"the latest news is that" (about Damascus 'recommencing' its practice of facilitating the entry of 'Sunni jihadi fighters into Iraq' - which I'm guessing is coming from the NYTimes article a few weeks ago, except that the intel sources cited in the article didn't suggest that the Syrian authorities were facilitating the movement, just that it was increasing)

If this is what passes for hard evidence we are all in a lot of trouble.