And they vote too!(See 1 below.)
===
Friedman on Europe and the U.S. (See 2 below.)
===
An interesting take on the market from a certain defined viewpoint:
An assessment of the market from the point of view of Conspiracists & Cynics
The market's exuberance is explained by a few simple If-Then statements
and some basic deductive reasoning.
One of the most common deductive logical arguments is modus ponens
(propositional logic), which states that:
p = q
(If p, then q)
(p, therefore q)
An example of modus ponens:
If I slam my finger in the car door, then I will be in pain.
I slammed my finger in the car door.
Therefore I am in pain.
* * *
An If-Then statement is just what the name says it is. It is a statement that proves if something
happens then something else happens.
The part after the "if": you slam your finger in the car door—is called a hypothesis and the part after
the "then"—you will be in pain—is called a conclusion.
Hypothesis followed by a conclusion is called an If-Then statement or a conditional statement.
C
onspiracists and Cynics (some would argue, Realists) argue that:
I
f the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee cannot
bring itself to taper, then things must really be pretty darn bad.
Further:
I
f things are really that bad, then the Fed knows deep down that
when it does begin to reduce its bond buying and ultimately ends its
purchases, the stock market likely will decline 15-20%.
Finally:
If the stock market is likely to drop 15-20% when eventually "they"
stop supporting things, then "they" invariably will want the stock
market up as much as possible before "they" exit so that the
inevitable plunge that's coming will be from greatly inflated levels…
such inflated levels as SPX low to mid 1700s… so that a drop of
15% to 20% will feel (and be) less painful than if "they" had begun
to taper at the beginning of the year when the SPX was at 1450+/-.
And therefore:
If a drop of 15% to 20% in the SPX from the 1450 level would have
meant SPX 1200+/- (bad, very bad), then a -15% to -20% move from
1725 means SPX 1450 +/- (bad, but better 1200, and still above the
2012 close)
Based on this market technician's view market deterioration is increasingly evident:
So… while it is widely held that breadth right now in the stock market is "good"… the way we
ourselves measure breadth suggests quite the opposite. Indeed, we would argue that breadth
peeked on May 22nd and failed to make a new high with the market on August 2
and not only failed again last week, but actually is below where it was in May.
To wit: we measure market structure by the number of stock judged to be at "identifiable" Buy
junctures (versus the number of stocks judged to be at "identifiable" Sell junctures and by the
number of stocks trading above their respective smoothing mechanisms (their 150-day moving
averages). And by this score, market breadth continues to deteriorate. Specifically, with regards to
stocks above or below the 150-day moving average, the deterioration in the statistics below is
irrefutable:
S&P 500 S&P 500 S&P 500
May 22nd High Aug 2nd High Sep 18th High
# of stocks in the S&P 500 above their 150-day moving average 468 425 394
# of stocks in the S&P 1500 above their 150-day moving average 1349 1241 1138
S&P 500 S&P 500 S&P 500
May 22nd High Aug 2nd High Sep 18th High
% of stocks in the S&P 500 above their 150-day moving average 94% 85% 79%
% of stocks in the S&P 1500 above their 150-day moving average 90% 83% 76%
===
I have made no comment about Obama's prospective meeting with Iran's new president until now.
I ask this simple question. On what basis can you trust Obama to do what is best for our nation since he has proven to be an unmitigated liar?
Power and pressure talks and it is obvious sanctions are taking their toll. My friend Avi Jorisch pressed for greater sanctions all along.
Bret Stephens reminds us the cost of "Striking Deals With Despots."
On the surface,it would appear things are going well vis a vis Syria and could with Iran but I suspect time will prove we have bought a bad deal in the case of Syria and will as well should we do something with Iran.
Despots know how to play cat and mouse, they know how vulnerable Western Democracies are to news events and public perception. They know Westerners lack patience.They have learned we can be had! (See 3 and 3a below.)
===
Dick
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1) The Hypocrisy of Congress' Gold Plated Health Care
Special subsidies for Hill workers trample on the Founders' code of equal application of the law.
By WILLIAM BENNETT And CHRISTOPHER BEACH
As close observers of history and human nature, James Madison and the other Founders of the U.S. Constitution knew that the equal and unbiased application of the law to all people, especially elected officials, is essential to freedom and justice and one of the primary safeguards from authoritarianism and oppression by a ruling class.
And so, referring to the members of Congress, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57: "[T]hey can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."
Today, elected officials need to be reminded of these truths. Under pressure from Congress, the White House has carved out a special exemption for Congress and its staffers from ObamaCare—the law it recently deemed necessary for the entire country. No Republicans voted for ObamaCare. Yet it appears that some of them support the exemption President Obama approved on his own—so they would not have to go on record with a vote for or against it.
This is the height of hypocrisy, and worse, a trampling of the Founders' code of equal application of the law. Having forced a health law on the American people, the White House and Democrats now seek to insulate themselves from the noxious portions of the law, and from the implementation struggles, indecision and uncertainty that many other Americans face today.In other words, Congress's health-care premiums will not rise, but yours may. Members of Congress will be able to afford to keep their health-insurance plan, but you may be kicked off yours. They will be able to afford to keep their doctors, but you may have to find a new one.
Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Republican from Florida, recently put forward legislation—aptly named the James Madison Congressional Accountability Act—which would end the special exemption. In the Senate, Republicans David Vitter of Louisiana and Mike Enzi of Wyoming have also introduced legislation to end the exemption.
In response, several Democratic senators have reacted by drafting legislation that would punish anyone who votes for Sen. Vitter's plan by permanently blocking an exemption from them and their staff, even if Mr. Vitter's law doesn't pass. It doesn't get more vindictive and petty than that.
All this began when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It compelled Congress and its staff to participate in ObamaCare and its insurance exchanges like other Americans who don't have employer-provided plans. But in their haste and confusion over legislation so long that few even read it all, some members of Congress voted for the law without realizing that the final bill had no mention of the very generous premium contributions the government makes to federal employees as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Imagine the horror when these elected officials, who make $174,000 a year, realized that not only must they and their staffers be subject to inferior-quality health exchanges like the millions of ordinary Americans, but they might also have to shell out thousands of dollars for increased premiums if they exceed the subsidy income cutoff.
The White House, under heat from Congress, directed the Office of Personnel Management to carve out special rules so that the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program can continue to contribute to the health plans used by Congress and congressional staff.
Congress complains that without its special subsidies the Hill will suffer a "brain drain" as staffers leave their jobs because of increasing out-of-pocket insurance costs. Heaven forbid Congress suffer the same fate as private companies like UPS, which recently had to cut health-care benefits entirely for employees' spouses; or labor unions, like the 40,000 International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers who recently left the AFL-CIO citing as one factor ObamaCare's tax on their "Cadillac" health-care plans.
You'd think that the authors of ObamaCare would have been prepared to cope with its effects. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, has already put money aside in his budget to help supplement his staff's health-care costs in anticipation of the new law. Other congressmen should have done the same.
Regardless of whether or not they support ObamaCare, members of Congress should refuse the special exemption. The law they enacted should apply to them.
Mr. Bennett, a former secretary of education, is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, "Morning in America." Mr. Beach is the show's executive producer.
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By George Friedman
I am writing this from Greece, having spent the past week in Europe and having moved among various capitals. Most discussions I've had in my travels concern U.S. President Barack Obama's failure to move decisively against Syria and how Russian President Vladimir Putin outmatched him. Of course, the Syrian intervention had many aspects, and one of the most important ones, which was not fully examined, was what it told us about the state of U.S.-European relations and of relations among European countries. This is perhaps the most important question on the table.
We have spoken of the Russians, but for all the flash in their Syria performance, they are economically and militarily weak -- something they would change if they had the means to do so. It is Europe, taken as a whole, that is the competitor for the United States. Its economy is still slightly larger than the United States', and its military is weak, though unlike Russia this is partly by design.
The U.S.-European relationship helped shape the 20th century. American intervention helped win World War I, and American involvement in Europe during World War II helped ensure an allied victory. The Cold War was a transatlantic enterprise, resulting in the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the European Peninsula. The question now is: What will the relationship be between these two great economic entities, which together account for roughly 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product, in the 21st century? That question towers over all others globally.
A Fluid Concept
The events surrounding the Syria intervention, which never materialized, hint at the answer to this question. The Syrian crisis began not with the United States claiming that action must be taken against al Assad's use of chemical weapons but with calls to arms from the United Kingdom, France and Turkey. The United States was rather reluctant, but ultimately it joined these and several other European countries. Only then did the Europeans' opinions diverge. In the United Kingdom, the parliament voted against intervention. In Turkey, the government favored intervention on a much larger scale than the United States wanted. And in France, which actually had the ability to lend a hand, the president favored intervention but faced a less enthusiastic parliament.
Most important to note was the division of Europe. Each country crafted its own response -- or lack of response -- to the Syrian crisis. The most interesting position was taken by Germany, which was unwilling to participate and until quite late unwilling to endorse participation. I've talked about the fragmentation of Europe. Nothing is more striking than the foreign policy split between France and Germany not only on Syria but on Mali and Libya as well. One of the central drivers behind the creation of the European Union and its post-war precursors was the need bind France and Germany economically. French and German divergence was the root of European wars. It had to be avoided at all costs.
Yet that divergence has returned. Their differences have not manifested as virulently as they did before 1945, but still, it can no longer be said that their foreign policies are synchronized. In fact, the three major powers on the European Peninsula currently are pursuing very different foreign policies. The United Kingdom is moving in its own direction, limiting its involvement in Europe and trying to find its own course between Europe and the United States. France is focused to the south, on the Mediterranean and Africa. Germany is trying to preserve the trade zone and is looking east at Russia.
Nothing has ruptured in Europe, but then Europe as a concept has always been fluid. The European Union is a free trade zone that excludes some European countries. It is a monetary union that excludes some members of the free trade zone. It has a parliament but leaves defense and foreign policy prerogatives to sovereign nation-states. It has not become more organized since 1945; in some fundamental ways, it has become less organized. Where previously there were only geographical divisions, now there are also conceptual divisions.
Differences between the United States and Europe were made clear in the Syrian crisis. Had President Obama chosen to intervene, he could have acted in Syria as he saw fit -- he didn't necessarily need congressional approval but sought it anyway. Europe could not act because there really isn't a singular European foreign or defense policy. But more important, no individual European nation has the ability by itself to conduct an air attack on Syria. As Libya showed, France and Italy could not execute a sustained air campaign. They needed the United States.
Cowboys and Naifs
Here in Europe, Obama is criticized for his handling of the Syria intervention. There is also a general belief that Putin's foreign policy is a failure. But I am old enough to remember that Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case. (Richard Nixon's being honored by the French is an interesting exception.) After some irrational exuberance from the European left, Obama has now been deemed naive, just as George W. Bush was deemed a cowboy.
Europeans obsess much more over U.S. presidents than Americans obsess over European leaders. They have strong opinions, most of them negative, about whomever is in office. My response to such criticism has always been a tricky one. Imagine the fine sophisticates of 1914 and 1939 with nuclear weapons. Do you think the ones responsible for entering two horrible wars could have resisted using nuclear weapons? It is the good fortune of Europe that when leaders were wont to use nuclear weapons, the Europeans didn't have their fingers on the launch buttons.
These weapons were controlled by American cowboys and fools and by Russian "conspirators" -- the European vision of all Russian leaders. Amid profound differences and distrust, U.S. and Soviet leaders managed to avoid the worst. Given their track record, Europe's leaders might have plunged the world further into disaster. The Europeans think well of the sophistication of their diplomacy. I have never understood why they feel that way.
We saw this in Syria. First, Europe was all over the place. Then the coalition that coaxed the Americans in fell apart, leaving the United States virtually alone. When Obama went back to his original position, they decided that he had been outfoxed by the Russians. Had he attacked, he would have been dismissed as another cowboy. Whichever way it had gone, and whatever role Europe played in it, it would have been the Americans that simply didn't understand one thing or another.
The sentiment differs throughout Europe. The British were indifferent to the entire matter; they were far more interested in what the Federal Reserve would say. The Eastern Europeans, feeling the pressure of the Russians -- both in reality and in their nightmares -- can't imagine why the Americans would let this happen to them. A friendly diplomat from the Caucasus told me that he wondered if the Americans weren't aware they were in a showdown with the Russians.
The American view of Europe is a combination of indifference and bafflement. Europe has not mattered all that much to the United States since the end of the Cold War. Since the first Gulf War, what has mattered is the Muslim world, with various levels of intensity. Europe was seen as a prosperous backwater, or as I once put it in 1991, all of Europe became Scandinavia. It was quite prosperous, a pleasure to visit, but not the place in which history was being made.
When Americans can be bothered to think of Europe, they think of it as a continent with strong opinions of what others should do but with little inclination to do something itself. As an American diplomat told me, "I always go to Paris if I want to be told what America should do." The American perception of Europe is that it is unhelpful and irritating but ultimately weak and therefore harmless. The Europeans are obsessed with the U.S. president because, fool or cowboy or both, he is extraordinarily powerful. The Americans are indifferent to the Europeans not because they don't have sophisticated leaders but because ultimately their policies matter more to each other than they do to the United States. Americans think little of Europe and then really don't understand what happens there. It's not clear to me that Europeans get it either.
But the most profound rift between the Americans and Europeans, however, is not perception or attitude. It is the notion of singularity, and many of the strange impressions or profound indifferences between the two stem from this notion. For example, a friend pointed out that he spoke four languages but Americans seem unable to learn one. I pointed out that if he took a weekend trip he would need to speak four languages. Citizens of the United States don't need to learn four languages to drive 3,000 miles. The dialogue between Europe and the United States is a dialogue between a single entity and the tower of Babel.
The United States is a unified country with unified economic, foreign and defense policies. Europe never fully came together; in fact, for the past five years it has been disintegrating. Division, as well as a fascinating pride in that division, is one of Europe's defining characteristics. Unity, as well as fascinating convictions that everything is coming apart, is one of the United States' defining characteristics.
Obsession and Fear
Europe's past is magnificent, and its magnificence can be seen on the streets of any European capital. Its past haunts and frightens it. Its future is not defined, but its present is characterized by a denial and a distance from its past. U.S. history is much shallower. Americans build shopping malls on top of hallowed battlefields and tear down buildings after 20 years. The United States is a country of amnesia. It is obsessed with its future, and Europe is paralyzed by its past.
Whenever I visit Europe -- and I was born in Europe -- I am struck by how profoundly different the two places are. I am also struck at how the United States is disliked and held in contempt by Europeans. I am also struck at how little Americans notice or care.
There is talk of the transatlantic relationship. It is not gone, nor even frayed. Europeans come to the United States and Americans go to Europe and both take pleasure in the other. But the connection is thin. Where once we made wars together, we now take vacations. It is hard to build a Syria policy on that framework, let alone a North Atlantic strategy.
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3)
Striking Deals With Despots
Stalin played FDR in 1945. Iran's Rouhani now attempts to do the same with President Obama.
By Bret Stephens
Why are democratic leaders so easily suckered and rolled by dictators when it comes to diplomacy? That's the question to ask as the Obama administration, fresh from getting rolled by Russia over Syria's chemical weapons, now tempts getting suckered by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani over his country's nuclear ambitions.
Part of the answer lies here, at the Livadia Palace in Yalta, where Joseph Stalin hosted Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in February 1945 to negotiate the political map of postwar Europe. For the people of central Europe, especially Poles, Yalta has long been a byword for betrayal: betrayal of Allied assurances that they would be allowed to determine their own futures democratically; betrayal of Western ideals of freedom and human rights at the altar of power politics.
Yet the truth about Yalta is more complicated, and more instructive. Roosevelt may have betrayed the principle of Polish freedom. But there was little he could do to change the fact that the Red Army owned Poland anyway. He also thought that, in exchange for accepting Stalin's terms on one front, he got Stalin's agreement on two others: Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and Soviet participation in the United Nations—two long steps, he thought, to ending the war faster and consolidating the peace better.
"In our hearts we really believed a new day had dawned," Harry Hopkins, FDR's closest aide, recalled about Yalta. "We were all convinced we had won the first great victory for peace. . . . The Russians had proved they could be reasonable and farsighted and neither the president nor any of us had the slightest doubt that we could live with them and get on peaceably with them far into the future."
It didn't turn out like that. But contrary to the suggestion that Yalta was an example of American cynicism or cowardice, it typified a style of American diplomacy that combined boundless idealism with fatal naiveté, an exaggerated confidence in the power of persuasion to bridge differences—and a fatal indifference to the importance of ideology in creating them.
Sound like any American president you know?
It was certainly true of FDR. The man who got what he wanted from the American public like no other president could be forgiven for thinking of himself as someone who understood people and their motivations. Returning from his first meeting with Stalin in Tehran in 1943, Roosevelt told reporters: "I got along fine with Marshal Stalin. He is a man who combines a tremendous determination with a stalwart good humor. I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe we are going to get along very well with him."
Yet the fundamental problem in encounters between democrats and despots is that, while the former understand the psychology of motivation and seduction (political and otherwise), the latter are masters of the arts of deceit and domination. Millions of Americans wept for FDR when he died in 1945 because he had given them hope. Millions of Russians wept for Stalin when he died in 1953 because he had given them terror. The human heart can be a dark place, even if people born in the happy countries rarely know it.
Historians of the Yalta conference have often noted that the Russians had every room in the palace bugged, and that Stalin was provided every morning with transcripts of Roosevelt's and Churchill's private discussions with their staffs. But Stalin's advantage at Yalta wasn't that he was better briefed. It was that he was a better psychologist. He knew how to turn Roosevelt's illusions to his own purposes.
Above all, FDR cherished the illusion that, through universal participation in the U.N., World War II could be what the first one had not: the war to end all wars. Stalin was more than willing to nurture FDR's idealism—provided FDR returned the favor by granting Stalin the run of his ambitions.
So it is with so many negotiations between democrats and tyrants: When there is a deal, it usually winds up being a trade between the theoretical and the tangible, the immediate concession and the long-term promise, the paper agreement and the territorial prize.
Which brings us back to the present. President Obama has spent five years giving abundant evidence of his desire to reconcile with autocrats, as he did with his Russian reset; to overcome mistrust by demonstrating the purity of his intent, as he tried in his Cairo speech; to seize on any enabling fiction that will relieve him of his commitments, as he has done with Syria. A deal with Iran, arranged via a first-of-its kind meeting with Mr. Rouhani, is a personal and ideological temptation Mr. Obama is incapable of resisting.
Should it happen (I'm betting it will), Mr. Obama will be hailed as a master diplomat and a triumphant peacemaker. As with Yalta, it won't take long to learn who is betrayed, and what is lost, in the service of an illusion.
3a)Like North Korea, Iran will negotiate until it is ready to vacate its signature on the NPT and test its first nuclear weapon.
Caroline Glick
Did US President Barack Obama score a great victory for the United States by concluding a deal with Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons or has he caused irreparable harm to the US’s reputation and international position? By what standard can we judge his actions when the results will only be known next year? To summarize where things now stand, last Saturday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov concluded an agreement regarding Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. The agreement requires Syria to provide full details on the size and locations of all of its chemical weapons by this Saturday. It requires international inspectors to go to Syria beginning in November, and to destroy or remove Syria’s chemical weapons from the country by June 2014.
Obama and Kerry have trumpeted the agreement as a great accomplishment. They say it could never have been concluded had the US not threatened to carry out “unbelievably small” punitive military strikes against the Syrian regime in response to its use of Sarin gas to massacre 1,400 civilians in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
And then there is the perception of an “Iran dividend” from the US-Russian deal. Just two days after last Saturday’s agreement, speculation mounted about a possible breakthrough in the six party negotiations with Iran regarding its illicit nuclear weapons program.
According to Der Spiegel, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may consider closing down Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment facility at Fordo under IAEA supervision in exchange for the removal or weakening of economic sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and its central bank.
The White House has not ruled out the possibility that Obama and Rouhani may meet at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. These moves could pave the way for a reinstatement of full diplomatic relations between the US and Iran. Those relations were cut off after the regime-supported takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.
Obama’s supporters in the US media and Congress have hailed these developments as foreign policy victories for the United States. Thanks to Obama’s brilliant maneuvering, Syria has agreed to disarm from its chemical weapons without the US having had to fire a shot. The Iranians’ increased willingness to be forthcoming on their nuclear program is similarly a consequence of Obama’s tough and smart diplomacy regarding Syria, and his clever utilization of Russia as a long arm of US foreign policy.
For their part, critics have lined up to condemn Obama’s decision to cut a deal with Russia regarding Syria.
They warn that his actions in that regard have destroyed the credibility of his threat to use force to prevent Iran from developing or deploying nuclear weapons.
To determine which side is right in this debate, we need to look no further than North Korea.
In April 1992 the IAEA concluded that North Korea was hiding information on its nuclear program from the UN and declared it in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it signed in 1985. In March 1993 North Korea announced its intention to vacate its signature from the NPT. Later that year, it later offered to begin negotiations related to its illicit nuclear program with the US.
Those negotiations began in early 1994, after the US canceled planned joint military exercises with South Korea as a goodwill gesture to the North. The talks led to the Agreed-Framework Agreement concluded later that year under which North Korea agreed to shutter its nuclear installation at Yongbyon where it was suspected of developing plutonium based nuclear weapons. In exchange the US and its allies agreed to build light water nuclear reactors in North Korea, and to provide North Korea with oil for energy production until the reactors were up and running.
In November 2002 the North Koreans acknowledged that they were engaging in illicit uranium enrichment activities. In January 2003 Pyongyang announced it was withdrawing from the NPT.
In February 2005 it announced it possessed a nuclear arsenal. And on October 9, 2006, North Korea launched its first test of a nuclear bomb.
The US suspended its talks with North Korea in 2003. It responded to the nuclear test by renewing those negotiations just weeks after it took place. And in February 2007 the US and North Korea reached an agreement under which Pyongyang agreed to close down Yongbyon in exchange for a resumption of shipments of free oil.
In September 2007, against the strenuous opposition of then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who was the architect of the US’s renewed push to cut a deal with North Korea, Israel destroyed a North Korean built nuclear reactor almost identical to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert. Had it become operational, Syria would likely have developed a nuclear arsenal by now.
In June 2008, the North Koreans demolished Yongbyon’s cooling tower.
Amidst fears that North Korea had reopened the reactor in the fall of 2008, the US removed North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Six months later, in April 2009, Pyongyang resumed its reprocessing of spent fuel rods for the production of plutonium. And the next month it conducted another nuclear test.
In 2010, North Korean scientists at Yongbyon told Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that the plutonium reactor had been shuttered.
Later in 2010, the North Koreans began open enrichment of uranium at Yongbyon.
Enrichment activities have doubled in scale since 2010. US experts now assess that with 4,000 centrifuges operating, North Korea produces enough enriched uranium to build three uranium based nuclear bombs every year. On February 12, 2013 North Korea conducted a third nuclear test. Experts were unclear whether the tested bomb a plutoniumbased or uranium-based nuclear weapon.
On September 11, the media reported that the latest satellite imagery indicates the North Koreans have resumed their plutonium production activities at Yongbyon.
Although the media claim that this represents an abrogation of the 2007 deal, it is unclear why that deal was considered in place given that North Korea began its reprocessing activities in April 2009 and tested another nuclear weapon the next month.
Although it issued a strong statement condemning the reopening of the plutonium operation at Yongbyon, the Obama administration remains committed to the sixparty talks with North Korea.
When viewed as a model for general US-non-proliferation policy, rather than one specific to North Korea, the North Korean model involves a rogue state using the Chinese and Russians to block effective UN Security Council action against its illicit development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Faced with a dead end at the UN, the US is forced to decide between acting on its own to compel a cessation of the illicit behavior, or to try to cut a deal with the regime, either through bilateral or multilateral negotiations.
Not wishing to enter into an unwanted confrontation or suffer domestic and international condemnations of American unilateralism, the US opts for diplomacy. The decision is controversial in Washington. And to justify their decision, the champions of negotiating deals with rogue proliferators stake their personal reputations on the success of that policy.
In the case of Rice, her decision to open negotiations with North Korea following its nuclear test was staunchly opposed by vice president Dick Cheney. And once the policy was exposed as a failure first by the intelligence reports proving that North Korea was proliferating its nuclear technologies and know-how to Syria, and then with its early suspension of its agreement to the 2007 agreement, rather than acknowledge her mistake, she doubled down. And as a consequence, under the nose of the US, and with Washington pledged to a framework deal to which North Korea stood in continuous breach, North Korea carried out two more nuclear tests, massively expanded its uranium enrichment activities, and reinstated its plutonium production activities.
Just as importantly, once the US accepted the notion of talks with North Korea, it necessarily accepted the regime’s legitimacy. And as a consequence, both the Clinton and Bush administrations abandoned any thought of toppling the regime. Once Washington ensnared itself in negotiations that strengthened its enemy at America’s expense, it became the effective guarantor of the regime’s survival. After all, if the regime is credible enough to be trusted to keep its word, then it is legitimate no matter how many innocents it has enslaved and slaughtered.
With the US’s experience with North Korea clearly in mind, it is possible to assess US actions with regards to Syria and Iran. The first thing that becomes clear is that the Obama administration is implementing the North Korean model in its dealings with Syria and Iran.
With regards to Syria, there is no conceivable way to peacefully enforce the US Russian agreement on the ground. Technically it is almost impossible to safely dispose of chemical weapons under the best of circumstances.
Given that Syria is in the midst of a brutal civil war, the notion that it is possible for UN inspectors to remove or destroy the regime’s chemical weapons is patently absurd.
Moreover, since the agreement itself requires non-compliance complaints to be discussed first at the UN Security Council, and it is clear that Russia is willing to do anything to protect the Syrian regime, no action will be taken to punish non-compliance.
Finally, like his predecessors with regard to Pyongyang, Obama has effectively accepted the continued legitimacy of the regime of Bashar Assad, despite the fact that he is an acknowledged war criminal.
As was the case with Pyongyang and its nuclear brinkmanship and weapons tests, Assad won his legitimacy and removed the US threat to remove him from power by using weapons of mass destruction.
As for Iran, Rouhani’s talk of closing Fordo needs to be viewed against the precedents set at Yongbyon by the North Koreans. In other words, even if the installation is shuttered, there is every reason to believe that the shutdown will be temporary. On the other hand, just as North Korea remains off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism despite the fact that since its removal it carried out two more nuclear tests, it is hard to imagine that sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank removed in exchange for an Iranian pledge to close Fordo, would be restored after Fordo is reopened.
Like North Korea, Iran will negotiate until it is ready to vacate its signature on the NPT and test its first nuclear weapon.
The critics are correct. And the danger posed by Obama’s decision to seek a false compromise rather than accept an unwanted confrontation following Syria’s use of chemical weapons will only be removed when the US recognizes the folly of seeking to wish away the dangers of weapons of mass destruction through negotiations. Those talks lead only to the diminishment of US power and the endangerment of US national security as more US enemies develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction with the sure knowledge that the US would rather negotiate fecklessly than contend responsibly with the dangers they pose.
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