From my own observations, while following the Atlanticist Council, I learned that Responsibility-to-Protect is a perfect mechanism for NATO or could be .... The problem with the R-to-P is that it could be used as a tool for regime change. The third pillar under R-to-P states that the International community has a responsibility to intervene when states fail to protect its population from crimes against humanity, including the collective use of force through the UN Security Council. China and Russia vetoed the Security Council decision on Syria:
There needs to be a mandate through the UN Security Council to intervene on behalf of Syria. Also, there is or should be a 4th pillar, as in the steps to deal with the aftermath---reconstruction after the military intervention. I was keen on a humanitarian agenda of the R-to-P, that I failed to realize the inherent dangers of using the R-2-P agenda for regime change.
When writing earlier about Syria, I mentioned Kosovo. The difference between Kosovo and Syria is that there was a real crisis in Kosovo and the international community didn't need a UN mandate to intervene. The international community took it upon their own behalf to intervene militarilty to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass attrocities...
I personally wonder if NATO has the balls to oust the dictator Assad, if & when the situation in Syria deteriorates. The international community has the Right-to-Protect---military intervention when crimes against humanity becomes mass attrocities. "Diplomatic efforts must win. If diplomacy fails, war results," and unquote.
I wrote a previous blog post about China becoming a formidable military power. The United States is using a strategy of engagement, sending their military to the Asia-Pacific in order to engage the Chinese military might, so that the country does not intimidate its neighbors over resources, and possess the South China Sea. The engagement strategy with another military power will continue spending on the Defense budget, but there will be cutbacks in US military spending. There has already been cutbacks. The NATO forces are also cutting their own military spending.
The US is cutting back by moving a majority of its forces out of Afghanistan-Iraq and Europe. By leaving Europe, the US-NATO led forces will concentrate on the Asia-Pacific and the rest of the Middle East---the world's energy corridors. Asia and Mideast are important regions in the coming years due to resource constraints and Iran as a threat for over the next decade. According to the Professor at the University of Chicago, John Measheimer:
"There is an important dimension to America's geopolitical situation: the state of the world economy. We are now undergoing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It appears we have avoided another Great Depression, but the damage to the Western economies have been enormous. One can never be sure we won't go back in the other direction. The United States is looking for ways to reduce or at least slow down spending on Defense."
America alone spends above 200trillion on the world's largest military force. About twice as much spending on the US military during WWII. The NATO-led forces could share some of the burden and responsibility in world peacekeeping efforts, in my opinion.
"All of this is to say that in the face of an increasingly powerful China, continued trouble in the Middle East, and a slow and painful end to the great recession. It is possible that the United States [NATO-led forces] will leave Europe and concentrate its limited resouces in Asia and the Middle East."
I won't be among the protestors against the NATO Summit. I am a college student, first and foremost an *academic. So, I will be following the NATO Summit from the sidelines for a more informed political and policymaking perspective. Also, I will be following the citizen journalists on the ground through Social Media---as they protests. You may follow me via Twitter: Ivbaoshi
"Let's be honest with the American people," quote & unquote. Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio)
Economics trumps politics--Oil.
1. Russia and Iran made a deal to form an oil burse to dominate the Persian Gulf region and Iran seeks to trade its Oil outside the USD.
2. NATO's invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, destroying the Taliban, left a vacuum in western Afghanistan, allowing Iran to annex it economically.
3. In April 2008, a serious debate arose about how to pipe gas through Central Asia. Whatever the route Pakistan chooses, Iran intends to control it---and determined to have defacto control over the Afghan pipeline's route, which goes through Herat, a city Tehran owns in all but name.
If Iran seeks to dominate the Persian Gulf, a long with its reserves, it will drive up the price of a barrel to $250, and unseat the dollar hegemony as the reserve currency. This would mean that Americans would have to pay $10 a gallon at the gas pumps. And, the same scenario applies if Israel decides to attack Iran.
In a secret memorandum between Henry Kissinger & Pinochet, the department of State and Augusto Pinochet “US-Chilean” Relations takes place on June 8, 1976:
Afterward, the bombing of Orlando Letellier followed two weeks later, but Pinochet survived the first attempt by the CIA. In this secret memorandum, Henry Kissinger briefs Pinochet, in advance, in his speech to the OAS in Santiago. He lets Pinochet know that he will treat the issue of human rights in general terms only. He stresses that his speech is not aimed at Chile, but it is intended to appease the United States Congress. He notes, “we have a practical problem we have taken into account bringing about pressures incompatible with your dignity, and at the same time, which does not lead to U.S. laws which will undermine our relations."
According to the declassified CIA memos and cables, at least some US officials acknowledged that the regime change was neither in the best interest of Chile, nor the United States. Defense Intelligence Agency analysts compared Pinochet’s secret police DINA to Hitler’s Gestapo. “A documented case can be made for the position that the current regime in Chile is militaristic, fascists, tyrannical and murderous (mass executions),” one State Department intelligence analyst reported in 1974. Public fears over government secrecy and deception are pervasive once again—similar to the current situation(s): Iran and Syria. Even so, 1974 demands to be remembered, as US foreign policy becomes further removed from the values, morality, and real national interests of the American public—Democracy and Crude Oil.
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Since after WWII, there was a surge in nationalism and anti-Colonialism. Regime change has weakened rather then strengthened American security. It produced generations of militants who are deeply and sometimes violently anti-American. There’s growing resentment against US military presence in the Mideast, which has given Iran the impetus to propagate violence against the United States & Western forces. Richard Nixon with the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger continued the strategy—developed under the brothers John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles—of dealing with dictators, as the likes of Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi, who allowed their countries to be used as platforms for the projection of American power.
Even, the Department of State, Hilary Clinton, apologized to Iran for the 1953 Coupe that ousted the democratic Prime Minister Mosadeq. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, known as (BP) British Petroleum had convinced the US to overthrow the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq, in 1953. Prime Minister Mosadeq arrived to the UN to present his case against a foreign corporation that controlled his country’s basic resource—Oil. The idealist and western-educated, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq embodied the cause that became his country’s obsession. He was determined to expel the Anglo Oil Company, nationalize the oil industry, and use the money it generated to develop Iran. The removal of Mosadeq was the removal of the only chance Iran ever had at a true democracy.
History of U.S. Intervention in Iran - 1953 Until Present
Mohammad Khazaee, the Iranian Ambassador to UN on Charlie Rose, said in a 2007 interview that there is no diversion of Iran’s nuclear program and that it is used for peaceful means; also, the IAEA is committed to a peaceful diplomatic solution. In the 2005 IAEA report information was not forthcoming from Iran on their nuclear program (underground nuclear facilities), nor does the report states Iran is aiming to create a nuclear bomb. Iran currently has 20% enriched uranium for a low grade nuclear bomb, and 60% enriched uranium is needed for a high yield nuclear bomb and double fold increase at industrial grade production. . .Then, Iran will have the nuclear capabilities similar to that of the United States, like the ability to build a bomb---similar to the one used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the past, US embarked on an ambitious plan to build 23 nuclear plantswith the power to supply electricity not only to Iran but the entire Persian Gulf. "The administration under President Ford offered to sell Iran a processing facility for extracting plutonium from a nuclear reactor fuel---a facility whole only possible use was to produce a nuclear bomb; enabling Iran to have a nuclear fuel cycle." Many years later, Henry Kissinger, who was President Ford's Secretary of State told Washington post: "I don't think the issue of proliferation came up." Even more interesting was that the Ford administration then included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who 30 years later were also key figures in the Bush Jr. administration, arguing for the use of force, if need be, "to stop Iran from enrinching uranium." It doesn't help the fact Iran secrectly pursued nuclear capabilities since, 2002.
30-years later, Iran now has the capability to enrich uranium on an industrial scale and by mid 2007, the IAEA Chief ElBaradei was concerned that Iran's head-long move toward nulcear capability, ignoring all international calls for it to stop, could end in disaster. ElBaradei repeatedly called upon Iran to halt nuclear enrichment, at least temporarily, as a confidence measure. I've observed that Iran wants to join the nuclear club among dominant Western powers. Iranian leaders are intent on testing an atomic device, in order to become a part of the nuclear club; although having a bomb isn't really important to Iran's national security interets or defense. Such a test would deter any US military strikes and change the balance of power in the region towards Iran's favor---regional hegemonic dominance---ushering a nuclear containment strategy on Iran, if it gets to that point in time.
Opponents of military action against Iran assume a U.S./Israeli strike would be far more dangerous than simply letting Tehran build a bomb ---1 single bomb compared to Israel's arsenal of 300 nukes. Even with a carefully designed military attack of taking out Iran's nuclear facilities (not including the un-reported underground facilities), a militar strike would be unwise leading to the laws of unintended consequences ---an attack on Americans abroad and at home. If diplomacy fails, war results, and it is a prelude to a nuclear Iran---containment of a dangerous nuclear power, and possbily leading to an eventual advent of WWIII.
Even the CIA Chief from the Bush administration, Micahel Hayden determined that attacking Iran was a very bad idea. In my own opinion, the US would be open to a nuclear Iran, but not under its current regime.
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According to a Mossad agent, "Iran is not an existential threat" but Iran is a threat.
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Read Ahmadinejad by Kasra Naji, Chapter 4: Iran's Nuclear Quest. Talks about the Ford Administration plan for a nuclear Iran.
In the words of Robert Baer, "the fact the United States provoked serious change in the Mideast" by invading Iraq, "is tatamount to Rome ceding the Mediterranean to Carthage"---that resulted in Iran annex of a 3rd of Iraqi oil fields and influence within the Iraqi government. Iran had a geopolitical strategy in Iraq: To recruit new legions of believers in its quest for empire and bleed the United States dry---the quagmire costing us $3trillion dollars and even more in Afghanistan. Iran long-term interest in Iraq was to diminish the United States resistance to Iran's desire for 'imperial' expansion. Iran clear interest was to keep the U.S. military bogged down in a war without end, which drains out treasury and makes Americans reluctant to enter another conflict in the Mideast. Iran's allies in the Mideast are Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. The war in Iraq was a mistake. The reality is that Iran used Iraq as a platform for dominating the Persian Gulf. Iraq was the first piece in Iran's quest for hegemony.
In December of 2007, the National Estimate (NIE) stated Iran suspended its nuclear activities and that Iran building a nuclear bomb is not vital to Iran's national security. However, the NIE did not diminish the threat that Iran poses to U.S. interests in the Mideast region. The declassified CIA memos I read stated that Iran was behind the bombings of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983. Iran propagated violence against US interest in the region, in reality, through a secret 30-year clandestine war... The US secret war with Iran has resulted in a war of "attrition"---a military strategy in which limited war is fought to wear down its enemy to the point of collapse through continuous loss of men and finances.
On the post 9/11 attacks, a declassified memo stated that the CIA simply assumed that the hijackers were travelling through Iran, not to Iran. Fiona Havlish suspected the link was Iran and sought a civil action for the death of her family members, but the CIA operatives hushed the court case. Fiona Havlish report:
Disclaimer: My thoughts are my own. I know nothing. I only put together bits and pieces for the bigger picture.
