Maine Owl

Iran anti-nuclear sanctions plan ill conceived


Iran nowhere close

I don't live in the 1st Congressional District any more, haven't since the time Tom Andrews held that House seat. But I do have some remarks on the 2008 Democratic primary race for the 1st District seat being vacated by Representative Tom Allen from an anti-nuclear-war point of view.

Because I see a disturbing trend in the Democratic approach to the politics of nuclear proliferation, I will focus on statements 1st District candidate Ethan Strimling gave during the Maine Public Broadcasting radio debate a couple of weeks ago. AUDIO CLIP:

STRIMLING: I have been a long-time activist against nuclear weapons. I have been a long-time activist trying to make sure we do not spread nuclear weapons around the planet. So I sponsored a bill to have the State of Maine divest its funds from Iran. [emphasis added]

Let's stop right there. Ethan Strimling thinks IRAN is the nation most problematic with regard to nuclear proliferation, hence the only one deserving any mention at all in a discussion about spreading "nuclear weapons around the planet"? I think this shows just how debased politics in the arena of foreign and military policy has become both locally and nationally.

The tone and emphasis of these anti-Iran statements and policy proposals by Ethan Strimling are all wrong. Why? For example, I discussed here how putting the advanced nuclear arsenal currently possessed by Israel on the table out in the open, and furthermore addressing the U.S.-Israeli threatening posture toward Iran would be a logical place to approach Mideast tensions and nuclear disarmament. Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and, according to U.S. intelligence agencies in the National Intelligence Estimate (pdf) made public in December 2007, "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." To my naive mind, it is extremely puzzling that we are talking about Iran while we bury out of view Israel's full-blown nuclear triad that is pointed mainly at non-nuclear-weapons states like Iran.

The disarmament logic of this vigorous yet highly dubious program of escalating punitive anti-Iranian economic sanctions escapes me. But not only is it endorsed by Strimling, so too it was by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee during a strongly pro-Israel speech last week. Among others, one of sanctions currently making the rounds in Congress is the Ackerman-Pence resolution that would try to cut off Iran?s imports of gasoline.

It's curious how gasoline is proposed as a cudgel against Iran. The result cannot be nuclear disarmament. If anything, a cutoff will entrench hardliners and make proliferation more likely. So, why do this?

I won't really try to answer that here. I'll save that for another post. But in researching this question, I'd point toward pre-Iraq-invasion neoconservative thought that I wrote about way back in March 2003. Obviously, the result of the U.S. Iraq invasion has been a strengthening of Iran's geostrategic position. I see these economic sanctions as a misguided attempt to destabilize Iran politically and perhaps taunt it into actions that could become an excuse for U.S. or Israeli military retaliation.

Maybe Iran hawks in the U.S. or Israel see this as a way to reverse the blown results of U.S. Iraq policy by punishing the people of Iran. In that way, it is not unlike the failed attack on the Iraqi populace during the 13-year Iraq sanctions regime from 1991 to 2003.

Without further detail I'll just conclude that while these kind of sanctions cause odd market complications and distortions, they are ineffective for the stated purpose. They are aimed at a government with an infant nuclear program and no active weapons effort. Hardly can they be seen as serious anti-proliferation measures. In my opinion, Ethan Strimling evidently unwittingly has signed onto a neoconservative destabilization program against Iran masked by a sincere desire "to make sure we do not spread nuclear weapons around the planet."

What makes no sense to me about this distorted position staked out by Ethan Strimling is that he and I both cut our teeth in anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid divestment activism in the same place: the Maine Peace Action Committee at the University of Maine. Strimling came a couple years after I had left the University, so we really did not know each other except through a few mutual friends. But anyway, his position on these Iran sanctions is doubly puzzling because I know that learning environment. It supposedly teaches you not to be taken in by these kinds of political distortions.

So if a political campaign were to deal honestly with nuclear weapons and other real military issues, not blinded by fear of Iran, what would be discussed? There is a very large elephant in the room that never comes up anymore: the immense nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, and the smaller ones held by other powers. The U.S. has a general military budget larger than the whole rest of the world combined. But "Military spending" or "Disarmament" or "Nuclear Weapons" do not even appear in the internet "issues" lists of most candidates, even Barack Obama's.

Here are some trenchant remarks on this issue by journalist Robert Scheer from an excellent Democracy Now! interview a couple of weeks ago:

ROBERT SCHEER: We spend?this is a statistic that still, I don't know, I find mind-boggling. I have to keep checking to make sure it's true. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on military. The whole world combined, friend and foe. We spend more. OK? We are spending more now than ever in peacetime America. We are spending more now than we did during the Vietnam War and during the Korean War. To what? To get guys who use $3 box cutters and penknives? You know, it's absurd.

It's an absurd waste of resources. We say we don't have money for the schools. We don't have money for infrastructure. We don't have money to help people with their housing loans. All these things. We don?t have money. You look at any social program, and now people say, "Wait a minute. You can't spend that money there. It's not cost-effective," and so forth and so on. But yet, you know, $300 billion for an F-35 multi-service airplane? $300 billion? And it's not questioned.

But while there is little current talk about excessive military spending, and despite the extreme pro-Israel pose Obama has struck, evidently for political reasons, I will give him some credit for these remarks:

OBAMA (October 2, 2007): Make no mistake: we must always be prepared to use force to protect America. But the best way to keep America safe is not to threaten terrorists with nuclear weapons - it's to keep nuclear weapons and nuclear materials away from terrorists. That's why I've worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law accelerating our pursuit of loose nuclear materials. And that's why I'll lead a global effort to secure all loose nuclear materials during my first term in office.

But we need to do much more. We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union - a country that doesn't exist. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan and North Korea have joined the club of nuclear-armed nations, and Iran is knocking on the door. More nuclear weapons and more nuclear-armed nations mean more danger to us all.

Obama also spoke that day months ago of useful disarmament measures, like a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons.

He does not challenge the fundamental tenet of "use of force" here. But it's a better posture than the more recent one where Iran is the incorrigible bad guy with all military sights aimed at Tehran.