The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:
A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present [...]]]>
The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:
A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition. In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim. The electoral process is mired in bureaucratic confusion, institutional duplication and political machinations. Electoral officials indicate that security and financial concerns will force the 2013 provincial council polls to 2014. There are alarming signs Karzai hopes to stack the deck for a favoured proxy. Demonstrating at least will to ensure clean elections could forge a degree of national consensus and boost popular confidence, but steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out.
Institutional rivalries, conflicts over local authority and clashes over the role of Islam in governance have caused the country to lurch from one constitutional crisis to the next for nearly a decade. As foreign aid and investment decline with the approach of the 2014 drawdown, so, too, will political cohesion in the capital.
…. Although Karzai has signalled his intent to exit gracefully, fears remain that he may, directly or indirectly, act to ensure his family’s continued majority ownership stake in the political status quo. This must be avoided. It is critical to keep discord over election results to a minimum; any move to declare a state of emergency in the event of a prolonged electoral dispute would be catastrophic. The political system is too fragile to withstand an extension of Karzai’s mandate or an electoral outcome that appears to expand his family’s dynastic ambitions. Either would risk harming negotiations for a political settlement with the armed and unarmed opposition. It is highly unlikely a Karzai-brokered deal would survive under the current constitutional scheme, in which conflicts persist over judicial review, distribution of local political power and the role of Islamic law in shaping state authority and citizenship. Karzai has considerable sway over the system, but his ability to leverage the process to his advantage beyond 2014 has limits. The elections must be viewed as an opportunity to break with the past and advance reconciliation.
Quiet planning should, nonetheless, begin now for the contingencies of postponed elections and/or imposition of a state of emergency in the run up to or during the presidential campaign season in 2014. The international community must work with the government to develop an action plan for the possibility that elections are significantly delayed or that polling results lead to prolonged disputes or a run-off. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should likewise be prepared to organise additional support to Afghan forces as needed in the event of an election postponement or state of emergency; its leadership would also do well to assess its own force protection needs in such an event well in advance of the election.
All this will require more action by parliament, less interference from the president and greater clarity from the judiciary. Failure to move on these fronts could indirectly lead to a political impasse that would provide a pretext for the declaration of a state of emergency, a situation that would likely lead to full state collapse. Afghan leaders must recognise that the best guarantee of the state’s stability is its ability to guarantee the rule of law during the political and military transition in 2013-2014. If they fail at this, that crucial period will at best result in deep divisions and conflicts within the ruling elite that the Afghan insurgency will exploit. At worst, it could trigger extensive unrest, fragmentation of the security services and perhaps even a much wider civil war. Some possibilities for genuine progress remain, but the window for action is narrowing.
Both the Obama Administration and Romney campaign have committed themselves to completing the handover by 2014.
]]>The front page of the 13 July edition of the Daily Telegraph caused a stir in Britain. The headline, amplified by that morning’s BBC News, read: “We foiled Iranian nuclear weapons bid, says spy chief”. Referencing a speech by the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to [...]]]>
The front page of the 13 July edition of the Daily Telegraph caused a stir in Britain. The headline, amplified by that morning’s BBC News, read: “We foiled Iranian nuclear weapons bid, says spy chief”. Referencing a speech by the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to 100 civil servants, the article begins with these two sentences:
Sir John Sawers said that covert operations by British spies had prevented the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons as early as 2008.
However, the MI6 chief said it was now likely they would achieve their goal by 2014, making a military strike from the US and Israel increasingly likely.
Later in the day The Guardian’s Julian Borger reported on his blog that Whitehall (British government) sources were saying that the point Sawers was trying to make was that without the combined work of Western intelligence agencies, Iran would have been even closer to obtaining the capacity to make a nuclear weapon.
That seems to be a likelier account, not least because it’s consistent with what the US intelligence community has been saying since 2007. (Over the years I’ve noticed a SIS weakness for exaggeration when it comes to trumpeting their achievements, despite their attachment to secrecy “in the national interest” when blunders have to be veiled).
So, it’s striking that Borger’s piece was not followed by an official clarification of what Sawers had said or meant. Instead, millions of Telegraph readers and BBC listeners who do not read Borger’s blog have been left with the impression that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and will do so by 2014.
To my mind this failure is symptomatic of a Western reluctance to acknowledge that the balance of probability has shifted since 2003: the evidence suggests that Iran switched that year from the goal of possessing nuclear weapons to the goal of possessing a “threshold” capacity – and to adjust policy accordingly.
Yet, legally there is a significant distinction between seeking weapons and seeking a threshold capacity: one is outlawed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the other is not.
As far back as 1968, US State Department officials were aware that under the freshly-minted NPT it would not be unlawful for a non-nuclear-weapon-state to achieve what they termed “nuclear pregnancy”. (Since 1968 several such states have done just that. If Iran acquires and is allowed to retain a nuclear weapons capacity, it will be in good company.)
It can even be argued that seeking “nuclear pregnancy” is for certain states a logical corollary to being an NPT party. Those who are familiar with the NPT will know that it includes a provision for withdrawal in the event that “extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardised the supreme interests” of a party.
Nuclear-weapon-state lawyers have doubtless strained to interpret this splendid example of diplomatic obscurantism in ways that favour the possessor states. The natural meaning, though, is that if a party feels that its security is threatened by a state possessing nuclear weapons, it may withdraw from the treaty.
It can be inferred that the drafters of the NPT could envisage without blanching that certain states might want to acquire a latent capacity to produce weapons quickly in certain extreme circumstances; they recognised that withdrawal would serve no useful purpose to a threatened party if that party had to embark from scratch on weapons research and the production of fissile material.
Morally, practically, politically and psychologically, too, the weapons/capacity distinction is important.
There is no double standard involved in objecting to Iran becoming nuclear-armed; refusing to tolerate an Iranian “pregnancy” is a double standard.
A nuclear-armed state may reasonably be thought to present a “clear and present danger” to other states (though in practice the reality of the threat is usually questionable), whereas a threshold state cannot.
None of Iran’s more respectable friends — it has more of these than Western propaganda admits — want Iran to get nuclear weapons. But they are philosophical about Iran attaining threshold status.
Iran’s leaders know that crossing the line separating capacity from possession would be fraught with consequence. As Frederick the Great once observed, one can get away with one breach of faith (in this case Iran’s NPT safeguards violations prior to 2004) but not two.
Yet Western leaders have failed to take a consistent stand on the high ground offered by this distinction.
One reason for this may be that our leaders believe that tolerating an Iranian weapons capacity — and acknowledging tacitly that “nuclear pregnancy” is not unlawful — could trigger proliferation. The same Telegraph reporter claims that earlier this year Sawers warned Ministers about a potential threat to Britain from a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. I shall address this possibility in a future piece.
]]>In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force [...]]]>
In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) when Gen. David Petraeus stepped down to take the helm of the C.I.A. in July, fall in line with other U.S. and international officials since President Obama announced in June that a complete transition to Afghan security responsibility would take place by the end of 2014.
CBS’s Scott Pelley asked Gen. Allen what his plan for Afghanistan was:
- ALLEN: Well the plan is to – is to win. The plan is to be successful and the United States is gonna be here for some period of time.
PELLEY: …You’re talking about U.S. forces being here after 2014?
ALLEN: Yes, there will be.
PELLY: …Are we talking about fighting forces?
ALLEN: We’re talking about forces that will provide an advisory capacity. And we may even have some form of counter-terrorism force here to continue the process of developing the Afghan’s counter-terrorism capabilities. But, if necessary, respond ourselves.
PELLEY: But what you’re saying is that the United States isn’t leaving Afghanistan in the foreseeable future?
ALLEN: Well that’s an important message.
As for specific numbers of U.S. forces that will remain, Allen said it was “too early to tell.”
Also in the 60 Minutes segment, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, in response to a direct question form Pelley, offered a veiled acknoweldgement that the U.S. was talking to at least some factions of the Taliban-led insurgency: “[W]e talk to the whole range of people, anyone who will talk to us. You can draw your own conclusions.”
Allen recounted a recent episode where he’d gone to Pakistan to ask the top military commander there, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to help stop a truck bomb that U.S. intelligence indicated was travelling from Pakistan to Afghanistan to target U.S. troops. “We think it ultimately exploded against the outer wall of one of our combat outposts,” said Allen. “Seventy-seven [Americans] were wounded that day.”
]]>Yossi Melman, who covers [...]]]>
Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence for the newspaper Haaretz and is at work on a book about Israeli intelligence over the past decade, said in a telephone interview that he suspected that Israel was involved [in the Stuxnet virus].
He noted that Meir Dagan, head of Mossad, had his term extended last year partly because he was said to be involved in important projects. He added that in the past year Israeli estimates of when Iran will have a nuclear weapon had been extended to 2014.
“They seem to know something, that they have more time than originally thought,” he said.
While neoconservatives in the U.S. and their allies on the Israeli right speak often about how Iran is on the cusp of nuclear weapons capability, this seems not to be the case — even by the estimates of Israeli intelligence.
Just yesterday, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, neoconservative Sen. Joe Lieberman said that Iran was mere months away from a weapons capability:
As my colleague in the House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, warned last week, we are talking about months, not years.
Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking for years about how an Iranian bomb was right aoround the corner. He started up this meme as early as 1995 — 15 years ago — with his book “Fighting Terrorism.” Phil Weiss has the key quote from Netanyahu, way back when (with my emphasis):
The best estimates at this time place Iran between three and fve years away from possessing the prerequisites required for the independent production of nuclear weapons. After this time, the Iranian Islamic republic will have the ability to construct atomic weapons without the importation of materials or technology from abroad.
If the Israeli intelligence estimate is to be believed, either these characters have a very distorted sense of time — 15 Earth years equals no time at all for Netanyahu — or they are promoting an alarmist time frame in the pursuit of an agenda.
(H/T Mid East Brief)
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