Due to holidays and other obligations, some time has passed since my first piece on Georgia/Russia and the Ossetian War. I can assure you, however, that the following editorial will more than compensate for the dearth of recent posts.
Yesterday, August 26, the International Herald Tribune headlined the article "Moles, cash and CIA undo a nuclear ring" by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, which elaborated on the whereabouts of a family of Swiss engineers - father Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Urs and Marco - and their involvement in a nuclear technology (mostly machine components for the construction of uranium enrichment centrifuges) smuggling network set up by the infamous Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan for the benefit of 'rogue states' and Pakistan's military establishment.
Most importantly, however, the article exposed the links between the Tinner family and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Due to the excellent investigative journalism of a small group of New York Times reporters, we now know that the CIA recruited the Tinners as moles in Khan's smuggling network, in order to gather intelligence on the nuclear progress of states such as Libya and Iran - according to several interviewed US officials, this intelligence proved instrumental in assessing the threat posed by these regimes. On several occasions, the Agency officers transferred cash to the Tinner family in return for nuclear intelligence.
Even though the Tinners are held in detention in Switzerland and the Swiss government declared in May that all the incriminating evidence had been destroyed to prevent it from falling into the wrong (read 'terrorist') hands, the story of this clandestine cash-for-intel deal is far from over. The agency's involvement in the untangling of Khan's black market was presented as a clear success, or in the words of Broad and Sanger, as an "intelligence coup".
But in my opinion, this conclusion is hypocritical; it tries to justify the Agency's own inability - or unwillingness, if you will - to dismantle the network in the past, by presenting the links with the Tinner family as a cleverly devised, purpose-based mole operation. No doubt the Bush Administration non-proliferation experts want you to believe they were on to the bad guys all the time and only moved in for the kill when the full extent of the network had become apparent.
Of course it is a good thing that the CIA managed to infiltrate Khan's smuggling ring; as explained in his biography by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, "The Nuclear Jihadist", Khan was remarkably indifferent towards the sale of nuclear technology to states with malicious regimes, regardless of ideology, alliance or strategic value. If the network had been able to continue running for another ten years without hindrance, the US list of 'rogue states' would surely managed to assemble a nuclear device; worst case, the nuclear know-how could have been transferred to terrorist organizations - some of which have been or are still being supported by Pakistan's might intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - with close links to individuals in Islamabad's military and nuclear establishment.
On another note, a very good account of Khan's activities, the intricacies of the Pakistani military and state and Western policies towards Pakistan's nuclear development is given in "Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy" by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, from which much of the information in this editorial is drawn.
In this sense, some credit must be given to the CIA officers responsible for the operation, but this is not the case when judging the conduct of their superiors, i.e. the officials directing the CIA's nuclear intelligence gathering and the Defense, State and White House officials responsible for formulating the U.S. Administration's non-proliferation policy. There are two reasons for this, both of which I will discuss hereafter:
1. Bush Administration policy makers - and many of their predecessors - willfully ignored the threat posed by Pakistan's nuclear arms bazaar, and only acted to dismantle it when its existence jeopardized the U.S. relationship with Pakistan as an ally in the War on Terror.
Ever since Pakistan managed to assemble a nuclear device - an event which most people agree occurredin the year 1984, under the rule of the notorious Zia ul-Haq - the Western intelligence community has gathered intel documenting the international sales of nuclear technology (e.g. blueprints, bomb designs, missile parts, machine components and uranium yellowcake, which is needed to produce the nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb).
For example, when it became apparent to the Mossad in the early 1980s that Pakistan was going to reach the final stage of uranium enrichment in its quest for a nuclear bomb, Israel offered to execute an airstrike on the Kahuta enrichment and research facility, using Indian Air Force bases to refuel its fighter jets - all to prevent an Islamic state from acquiring 'The Bomb'.
Likewise, the CIA, British MI6, Indian RAW and International Atomic Energy Agency since 1984 gathered intelligence implicating Khan, his associates and Pakistani government and military officials in the selling of nuclear technology to Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and even to fundamentalist Jihadis in the Islamic World. The Tinner case, although valuable in assessing the nuclear programmes of Iran and Libya, was by no means a breakthrough in confirming Pakistan's involvement in these sales; after all, this had been an accepted thruth in the Western intelligence community for years.
This is another point of controversy; if the CIA infiltrated Khan's network, was it really to take out the supplier or simply to identify the clients it served? Most likely, the latter is the case, as all the non-proliferation talk coming from the US in recent years has focused on Iran - and before 2003, on Libya to a lesser degree.
From a realist point of view, it is explainable and perhaps even acceptable that Musharraf's support of the U.S. effort against Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan supersedes nuclear non-proliferation or democracy promotion. As Thomas Carothers wrote recently, the Mush & Bush alliance was "the ultimate realist bargain".
But if we take realism as a guiding principle in determining the nature of the US relationship with Pakistan, consider the following: does the importance of Pakistan's military and intelligence support against terrorists outweigh the potential danger of nuclear terrorism, which is all the more likely to directly target the United States?
Clearly, stopping the activities of Khan's nuclear bazaar should rank above the support for an autocratic and militaristic regime with close ties to the same terrorists it claims to be fighting.
2. The CIA operation cannot be dubbed a complete success until the network has been fully undone; declaring it to be inactive is a premature conclusion as many of Khan's nuclear acquaintances and business associates have not been charged or apprehended.
Even though A.Q. Khan was formally indicted by President Musharraf in February 2004, his televised public confession - in which he, to the amazement of most Pakistan experts and non-proliferation specialists, declared to have acted on his own and without the knowledge of the Pakistani government - did not put an end to the activities of his smuggling ring. Not all of Khan's associates, who include dozens of suppliers, middlemen and clients in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia, have been apprehended or even charged.
The flawed U.S. policy of first dealing with Pakistan's clients (invading Iraq, pressuring Iran and galvanizing North Korea into testing a nuclear device) before exerting pressure on Islamabad itself to rein in its nuclear salesmen has given ample warning to members of the network that their activities had been uncovered long before Khan's fall from grace, 9/11 or the advent of the Bush Administration.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Only time will show the true ramifications of Khan's activities. However disturbing these may be, it is also very worrysome that the U.S. government tends to ignore incriminating intelligence when its policy makers shield ulterior motives in supporting what is effectively a rogue regime covertly proliferating nuclear technology. That this approach is hypocritical given the attention devoted to containing the allegedly 'rogue states' of Iran, Iraq and North Korea is not even the worst error of the Bush administration; it is that the United States is actually placing the Western world's security at risk when it is claiming to be fighting against - potentially nuclear - terrorism.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Russia's War Against the Status Quo
By a startling coincidence, a seventeen-year-old conflict in the ethnic jigsaw of the Caucasus erupted in full fury on Friday, just hours before the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing. What started as an attempt by Georgian forces to assault or contain (opinions differ over this matter) pro-Russian separatists in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia escalated on Saturday into a fully-fledged war involving the Russian Federation - which claimed to act as the defender of all South Ossetian citizens with Russian nationality and as a guarantor of peace in the region. Indeed, as the International Herald Tribune remarked yesterday, the fighting around the South Ossetian capital of Thskinvali between Georgian forces on one side and Russian, South Ossetian and Abkhazian troops on the other constitutes "the heaviest clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979."
If the reports about Russian air strikes against the Tbilisi military airbase and trans-Caucasian pipeline are correct, then these actions may lead to further escalation of the conflict; this is especially true now that Russian forces continue to stream into South Ossetia by the thousands, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet has landed ground forces on and moved warships to the coast of Abkhazia, another separatist region which has the status of an autonomous republic within Georgia. The latter disposition of forces gives the conflict an entirely different edge, as it suggests that Russia is preparing to take control of not only South Ossetia, but other separatist regions in Georgia as well.
The first indication of trouble to come is the fact that on Saturday, UN peacekeeping forces (United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, UNOMIG) in Abkhazia retreated at the request of the Russophile Abkhaz government, a move which makes the arrival of substantial Russian naval forces dangerous. News reports indicate that the few hundred Russian soldiers already in Abkhazia (ostensibly as peacekeeping 'railway troops' under the mandate of the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS) have moved against Georgian positions in the Kodori Gorge, a small piece of Abkhaz territory conquered by Georgia in 2006; these Russian forces are allegedly supported by air strikes and pro-Russian Abkhaz insurgents.
And then there is Vladimir Putin, who on Russian State Television said that "there is almost no way we can imagine a return to the status quo", implying that Russia would not withdraw from the invaded territories within the near future. He also declared all Georgian claims of sovereignty over South Ossetia - and indirectly, Abkhazia - to be invalid, which sparked fears about a possible Russian annexation of the satellite states it helped to establish on Georgian territory after violent seccesionist conflicts in 1991-'93. Most alarming of all, the BBC reported he said it was "unlikely that South Ossetia would ever reintegrate with Georgia".
If Russia is really trying to use the Georgian offensive against South Ossetian insurgents as a a pretext to establish full control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and integrate them into the Russian Federation, then the run-up to this invasion was very cleverly conceived and executed. Russia has CIS-mandated 'peacekeepers' in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, has provided military and financial aid to these regions to make them militarily and politically self-sustaining, and has engaged in a series of provocations with Tbilisi over the past few months, which included the stray firing of a missile onto Georgian territory, the lifting of CIS sanctions on the renegade Abkhaz regime and the violation of Georgian airspace on numerous occasions. Vice versa, the Georgians have responded with or initiated similar actions. It is clear that the Russians, by inciting a renewed insurgency by the Abkhaz separatists - who committed atrocities in the early nineties that practically constitute genocide - and even providing direct military support to the militants, have unnecessarily escalated the war and are aiming for far larger objectives than the protection of Russian citizens. One cannot help but suspect that the Kremlin harbours ulterior motives...
Moreover, Russia has attacked targets outside South Ossetia from the air, including Georgian cities outside the conflict zone, such as the port city of Poti on the Black Sea, the town of Gori, 50 miles from Tbilisi, the military airbase of Tbilisi and allegedly, parts of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline - which transports oil from Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea to Turkey on the Mediterranean. In addition, refugees and journalists report Russian artillery firing from South Ossetia into Georgian territory. Dimitri Medvedev argued that Russia was intervening in South Ossetia on an entirely 'lawful' basis, namely that Russian citizens were being attacked and that their defence fell under the mandate granted to Russian peacekeepers by the CIS - and thus, as Medvedev bizarrely claimed, granted by the "international community" as a whole. Even if this reason was legal under international law and fell within the CIS mandate, the truth remains that Moscow has now forfeited its right to act as the sole protector of peace in South Ossetia, by attacking numerous Georgian civilian and military targets outside its mandated zone. It thus can no longer claim to be occupying the legal - or even moral - high ground in this conflict, for the abovementioned attacks are completely unlawful, even if one applies Medvedev's own war rethoric to them.
Also, Georgia has not attacked targets on sovereign Russian soil, so the Russian pretexts for attacking any target whatsoever in what is undisputed Georgian territory hold no water. Not even the unconfirmed Russian claims of Georgian "acts of aggression" against Russian peacekeepers and Ossetian civilians will justify this unnecessary escalation and provocative act from the Russian side. It is Moscow that has really taken this war to its opponent.
The first priority now is a ceasefire in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and an immediate halt to the Russian reinforcement of troops in both regions. The international community cannot allow Russia to annex states under false pretentions like the Great Powers did a hundred years ago in their 'territory trade' in the Balkans and the Caucasus. If Russia continues to execute attacks on Georgian territory (by which I mean those parts of Georgian territory that are being disputed by any state actor) and pursues its ground offensive into Georgia proper, it is legally, politically, ethically and diplomatically the aggressor in this war, and in that case the international community will have to use every means necessary to put an end to this conflict.
More commentary on the South Ossetian War will follow in the next few days.
If the reports about Russian air strikes against the Tbilisi military airbase and trans-Caucasian pipeline are correct, then these actions may lead to further escalation of the conflict; this is especially true now that Russian forces continue to stream into South Ossetia by the thousands, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet has landed ground forces on and moved warships to the coast of Abkhazia, another separatist region which has the status of an autonomous republic within Georgia. The latter disposition of forces gives the conflict an entirely different edge, as it suggests that Russia is preparing to take control of not only South Ossetia, but other separatist regions in Georgia as well.
The first indication of trouble to come is the fact that on Saturday, UN peacekeeping forces (United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, UNOMIG) in Abkhazia retreated at the request of the Russophile Abkhaz government, a move which makes the arrival of substantial Russian naval forces dangerous. News reports indicate that the few hundred Russian soldiers already in Abkhazia (ostensibly as peacekeeping 'railway troops' under the mandate of the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS) have moved against Georgian positions in the Kodori Gorge, a small piece of Abkhaz territory conquered by Georgia in 2006; these Russian forces are allegedly supported by air strikes and pro-Russian Abkhaz insurgents.
And then there is Vladimir Putin, who on Russian State Television said that "there is almost no way we can imagine a return to the status quo", implying that Russia would not withdraw from the invaded territories within the near future. He also declared all Georgian claims of sovereignty over South Ossetia - and indirectly, Abkhazia - to be invalid, which sparked fears about a possible Russian annexation of the satellite states it helped to establish on Georgian territory after violent seccesionist conflicts in 1991-'93. Most alarming of all, the BBC reported he said it was "unlikely that South Ossetia would ever reintegrate with Georgia".
If Russia is really trying to use the Georgian offensive against South Ossetian insurgents as a a pretext to establish full control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and integrate them into the Russian Federation, then the run-up to this invasion was very cleverly conceived and executed. Russia has CIS-mandated 'peacekeepers' in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, has provided military and financial aid to these regions to make them militarily and politically self-sustaining, and has engaged in a series of provocations with Tbilisi over the past few months, which included the stray firing of a missile onto Georgian territory, the lifting of CIS sanctions on the renegade Abkhaz regime and the violation of Georgian airspace on numerous occasions. Vice versa, the Georgians have responded with or initiated similar actions. It is clear that the Russians, by inciting a renewed insurgency by the Abkhaz separatists - who committed atrocities in the early nineties that practically constitute genocide - and even providing direct military support to the militants, have unnecessarily escalated the war and are aiming for far larger objectives than the protection of Russian citizens. One cannot help but suspect that the Kremlin harbours ulterior motives...
Moreover, Russia has attacked targets outside South Ossetia from the air, including Georgian cities outside the conflict zone, such as the port city of Poti on the Black Sea, the town of Gori, 50 miles from Tbilisi, the military airbase of Tbilisi and allegedly, parts of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline - which transports oil from Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea to Turkey on the Mediterranean. In addition, refugees and journalists report Russian artillery firing from South Ossetia into Georgian territory. Dimitri Medvedev argued that Russia was intervening in South Ossetia on an entirely 'lawful' basis, namely that Russian citizens were being attacked and that their defence fell under the mandate granted to Russian peacekeepers by the CIS - and thus, as Medvedev bizarrely claimed, granted by the "international community" as a whole. Even if this reason was legal under international law and fell within the CIS mandate, the truth remains that Moscow has now forfeited its right to act as the sole protector of peace in South Ossetia, by attacking numerous Georgian civilian and military targets outside its mandated zone. It thus can no longer claim to be occupying the legal - or even moral - high ground in this conflict, for the abovementioned attacks are completely unlawful, even if one applies Medvedev's own war rethoric to them.
Also, Georgia has not attacked targets on sovereign Russian soil, so the Russian pretexts for attacking any target whatsoever in what is undisputed Georgian territory hold no water. Not even the unconfirmed Russian claims of Georgian "acts of aggression" against Russian peacekeepers and Ossetian civilians will justify this unnecessary escalation and provocative act from the Russian side. It is Moscow that has really taken this war to its opponent.
The first priority now is a ceasefire in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and an immediate halt to the Russian reinforcement of troops in both regions. The international community cannot allow Russia to annex states under false pretentions like the Great Powers did a hundred years ago in their 'territory trade' in the Balkans and the Caucasus. If Russia continues to execute attacks on Georgian territory (by which I mean those parts of Georgian territory that are being disputed by any state actor) and pursues its ground offensive into Georgia proper, it is legally, politically, ethically and diplomatically the aggressor in this war, and in that case the international community will have to use every means necessary to put an end to this conflict.
More commentary on the South Ossetian War will follow in the next few days.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Welcome to Foreign Events!
Dear Visitor,
Truly yours,
Nick Mulder
Welcome to the Foreign Events Blog, a portal in which I, Nick Mulder, will publish articles, essays, news and commentary about a wide range of global issues that feature in contemporary international politics, economics, society. In addition, I will reflect on historical and philosophical questions that continue to play a role in the world of international affairs. Most of the information on my blog will be in English, in order to be able to address a larger, international audience. I will try to update at least once a week, but of course the frequency of my posts will depend on the amount of interesting and relevant events that occur.
Let me introduce myself first. My name is Nick Mulder, I am Dutch and very involved and interested in international affairs, in the widest sense imagineable. My interests within this area range from the conduct of modern multilateral diplomacy to the development of free trade and from the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to international (public and criminal) law, and I have been debating, researching and analyzing them for quite some time now. A while ago I realized it would be worth the effort to share my opinions, interpretations and observations with regard to these important issues with a wider public, and I found the Internet to be the perfect medium to put this wish into practice.
My aim in sustaining this blog is not to personally attack, insult or provoke any person, ethnic group, activist movement or religious community in particular, but rather to address an array of topics that I find of particular importance in today's world, to provide information, commentary and suggestions about these questions or events (and their consequences in a larger context), and to stimulate readers to contemplate these issues themselves - and share their views about them with me and other visitors. I encourage a lively and constructive debate and do not pretend to be an authority or unbiased commentator on every subject; if you feel I am wrong, do not hesitate to comment on my published materials. For now, I hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I will enjoy composing it, and that it will incite you to give our world some thought of your own. Timendi causa est nescire ("The cause of fear is ignorance", Seneca)
Let me introduce myself first. My name is Nick Mulder, I am Dutch and very involved and interested in international affairs, in the widest sense imagineable. My interests within this area range from the conduct of modern multilateral diplomacy to the development of free trade and from the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to international (public and criminal) law, and I have been debating, researching and analyzing them for quite some time now. A while ago I realized it would be worth the effort to share my opinions, interpretations and observations with regard to these important issues with a wider public, and I found the Internet to be the perfect medium to put this wish into practice.
My aim in sustaining this blog is not to personally attack, insult or provoke any person, ethnic group, activist movement or religious community in particular, but rather to address an array of topics that I find of particular importance in today's world, to provide information, commentary and suggestions about these questions or events (and their consequences in a larger context), and to stimulate readers to contemplate these issues themselves - and share their views about them with me and other visitors. I encourage a lively and constructive debate and do not pretend to be an authority or unbiased commentator on every subject; if you feel I am wrong, do not hesitate to comment on my published materials. For now, I hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I will enjoy composing it, and that it will incite you to give our world some thought of your own. Timendi causa est nescire ("The cause of fear is ignorance", Seneca)
Truly yours,
Nick Mulder
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