Thursday, May 25, 2006

October Surprise

There's been a lot speculating about what Karl Rove might pull after Labor Day that might swing public opinion back in favor of keeping the GOP in the majority in Congress. That is, if he's not indicted in the next month or so. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on a partial troop withdrawal from Iraq, complete all sorts of military parades and media fanfare, and the president ripping off Congressman Jack Murtha (D-Big Balls) by saying these troops have done their job, and that's it's time they came home. I'm thinking about 50,000 or so. That's not much of a surprise, but it could play very well for an American public yearning for some kind of change.

Let me say right off that I'd like nothing more than to have those men and women in our military to be at home with their famalies. They've busted their asses, and they need to resume their lives as best they can after three or more tours in Iraq.

On a seperate note, if you're from the right or left, read this book: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War

This trend toward militarizing everything in America, and most importantly foreign policy, did not begin with the second Bush administration. Mr. Bacevich not only presents a cogent and honest account of how we got where we are, but also provides a meaningful prescription for our way back to sanity and a country our founding fathers might recognize.

Friday, May 05, 2006

More on Nuclear Proliferation

I've written a little bit about this before, but I saw a pretty good post over at the Huffington Post by Joe Cirincione that adds more to a topic which I think is one of the most critical security issues facing the U.S. today. As for treaties and policy:

Though not without its failures and faults, this interlocking network of global restraints had blocked if not altogether prevented the spread of these dangerous weapons. Far more countries over the past 15 years, for example, have been persuaded to abandon nuclear weapon programs or weapons than have initiated such programs. There are half the number of nuclear weapons in the world today than there were 15 years ago and chemical and biological weapons have been largely eliminated as serious state threats. All this is due to the policies and treaties negotiated by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The new team would have none of it. They were scathing in their criticism. Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton said in 2004, "The Bush administration is making up for decades of stillborn plans, wishful thinking, and irresponsible passivity. After many years of hand-wringing with the vague hope to find shelter from gathering threats, we are now acting decisively. We will no longer accept being dispirited by difficult problems that have no immediate answer."

Our current U.N. Ambassador sure sounds like fun guy. I read this as follows: treaties and arms control accords are for pussies, and what we need is more weapons. More importantly, what we really need is the moral certitude to inflict as much violence as we can, regardless if we're seen as butchers by the world community. At this point in history, our representative at the United Nations is nothing more than a madman with anger issues running around with a cudgel threatening everybody.
Gary Schmitt, an analyst at the Project for the New American Century, said more directly, "Conservatives don't like arms control agreements for the simple reason that they rarely, if ever, increase U.S. security." He contended that it was no longer "plausible to argue that our overall security was best served by a web of parchment accords, and not our own military capabilities."
Sure, the best way to negotiate with people is to threaten them.
The danger of nuclear terrorism has also grown as the ideology of al Qaeda has spread like wildfire throughout the Muslim world. But our programs to secure and eliminate the highly-enriched uranium and plutonium scattered in stockpiles in dozens of countries have not kept pace.
Amen. One notable exception to all this is Lybia giving up their nuclear ambitions and turning over all of their equipment to the U.S. That success occured mostly in spite of U.S. policy, and was brokered for the most part by the British in negotiations that tooks years to complete.

So, don't be surprised if thousands of Americans are murdered, and a large U.S. city is rendered uninhabitable in the next fifteen years because the Bush administration has failed to take this situation seriously. Their response to such an attack mirrors their current policy: unleash a massive wave of violence, preferably using nuclear weapons.

Peak Oil and the Wars of the 21st Century

I found this article by Michael Hirsh of Newsweek interesting: "The Energy Wars. The rise of a new global energy elite means high oil and gas prices are here to stay." And not because I learned a lot from it, but because that it appeared at all in a major publication. Let's go through some of it.
President Chavez, sitting atop his growing pile of petrodollars, has gleefully thumbed his nose at Washington’s efforts to rein him in.
This is a minor point, but Chavez has every right to do what he pleases with the oil that sits beneath his country, and the snide comment above comes from the conventional wisdom in Washington that anyone that has energy resources automatically needs to be under the U.S.'s thumb. Onward:
The Bush administration may think it has one trump card in Iraq. U.S. interests obviously lie with the vast proven and potential Iraqi oil fields, said to be the world's largest. The Iraqi oil ministry has signed about 40 memorandums of understanding, many with U.S. companies, according to industry sources. Under them, the majors such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are giving technical advice "free" to the ministry (a typical get-in-the-door strategy for the industry). Challenged at a congressional hearing in March, CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid was frank in suggesting that, while oil was not the reason America went to war, it may provide a critical reason for staying. "The United States and its allies have a vital interest in the oil-rich region," Abizaid said. "Ultimately it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else in the world depend." [emphasis mine]
Isn't that a shocker. I honestly appreciate it the General's frankness. I think we did go to war in part because of oil, but not in the let's-make-our-buddies-rich way. It was a way of making sure the U.S. has a big say in how the last remaining supplies of oil get divied up in the next decade or so, especially when the world passes peak production. Again, that was only part of the reason the U.S. went in. You can almost hear this oil man drooling:
"The Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people. If the Iraqi people determine that they want the help of international oil companies in developing their resources, then ExxonMobil would certainly be interested in participating."
Here's what I found shocking, and this is coming from a friend of Dick Cheney's, and a former Reagan administration official:
"Worldwide production will peak. The result will be skyrocketing prices, with a huge, sustained economic shock. Jobs will be lost. Without action, the crisis will certainly bring energy rivalries, if not energy wars. Vast wealth will be shifted, probably away from the U.S. For the last 20 years, U.S. policy has discouraged production and encouraged consumption. If we dither any more, we will pay a terrible price, the economic equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Katrina was Category 4."
This isn't the crazy blogger FuzzFinger saying oil production will peak, this is a Republican official saying it. The wars of this century will be fought over what's left of the dwindling supplies of oil, and if you put the Iraq War in the that context, these wars have already begun.

It's a pretty good article, and I'd recommend checking it out. There's some good information on Russia in there as well.