International Affairs: April 2003 Archives
It must be recognized that the past two decades really have ushered in the New Order of the Ages that is proclaimed on the back of our $1 bills. I like "New World Order" better, but apparently that's not an acceptable translation. Same difference.
Anyway, this article by Gregg Easterbrook in the NY Times claims that the sea, air, land, and space arms races are essentially over, and that every nation has surrendered and resigned itself to American superiority. He makes some persuasive points, including
global military spending, stated in current dollars, peaked in 1985, at $1.3 trillion, and has been declining since, to $840 billion in 2002. That's a drop of almost half a trillion dollars in the amount the world spent each year on arms. Other nations accept that the arms race is over.He concludes his article by arguing that the result of this American superiority may be a strengthened desire among some nations to acquire nuclear weapons -- the only trump card that could possibly discourage American military action.
Frankly, I see it as inevitable that every country will at some point possess nuclear weapons. They're expensive and complicated, of course, but as technology advances the difficulties will grow less and less. This inevitability is the primary reason that it is essential for America and our allies to spread our New political Order to the rest of the world, and to encourage, coerce, and even force other nations into the liberal democratic mold. It is essential to our long-term security, and even to the survival of humanity as a species. With great power comes great responsibility, as we've been told, and the awesome power of nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of autocratic dictators whose only goals are their own survival.
We can discuss the morality of forcibly changing other nations' governments later, but it seems very simple to me. A dictator like Castro or Mugabe has no more right to rule a nation than I do, and far less right than the people of that nation themselves.
(Article found via Donal Sensing.)
Glenn Reynolds writes supporting a plan to give ownership of Iraq's oil directly to the Iraqi people. Quoting Michael Barone,
The Alaska Permanent Fund each year pays a dividend of 20 percent of the state’s oil profits to every citizen — $1,540 per person in 2002. The rest of the money is invested, to provide a permanent income when oil revenues decline. Alaskans regard this as personal wealth; in 1999, 83 percent of Alaska voters rejected a proposal to use Permanent Fund revenues for state government spending. A similar fund could be created for Iraqis. It could provide a payment of something like $1,000 a year —meaningful in a country where Umm Qasr dockworkers make $30 a month.It's an interesting idea. Obviously, if every Iraqi has an extra $1000 per year in income it will cause dramatic inflation and will not directly quadruple their buying power. Still, the idea has merit. In order for it to work properly, and for the distributed ownership to actually foster capitalism, it is essential that each person be able to sell or rent out their share of the oil. Private corporations must arise to manage and develop the oil deposits, and these duties must not be left to the government. Each individual Iraqi should be able to decide who controls and administrates his share of the oil.
Finally, I'm not sure if it's wise to give parents control over their kids' share of the oil. It might be more beneficial to hold each child's oil money in trust until they reach adulthood. There are a lot of details to be worked out, obviously.
Opinion Journal quotes this headline from Pravda: "Russian Weapons Make All Countries Feel Safe". The article itself is quite an interesting read, and the title is fun to analyze -- Russian weapons don't make countries safe, they just make countries feel safe. The countries that have the Russian weapons, or those countries' enemies? Here are some other choice bits.
It became obvious after Iraq ingloriously surrendered to coalition forces of the USA and Great Britain: no country could feel safe without nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.Actually, Iraq's forces, and their Russian weapons, were totally defeated.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov happily stated during his visit to South Korea that a number of addresses to the Russian Defense Ministry pertaining to deliveries of up-to-date conventional arms had increased greatly. The minister did not fail to thank the American government for advertising cheap and reliable Russian arms for free.I really hope that all our enemies buy Russian weapons, please oh please. I think our government should endorse them heavily.
The popularity of the Russian weapons has not suffered a bit on account of the fact that the Iraqi army lost the war. At the end of the day, the Soviet weapons - Kalashnikov guns, MiG planes and guided missiles - defeated the American army in Vietnam.Where to start? Russian weapons defeated American soldiers who fought with their hands tied behind their backs 30 years ago. Why not buy weapons from the American Indians? They defeated Custer a while back.
A lot of countries (especially Muslim ones) evince their interest in compact anti-aircraft complex Phoenix, which is capable of detecting and downing air targets.Figure that one out.
The Russian leadership will need to have a lot of courage and political will to arm the whole world. Russia might help a lot of countries in this respect, if it is allowed to do so, of course.I hope they do sell weapons to the world. It will help their economy, and weaken our enemies at the same time.
It is worth mentioning here that members of the Saudi royal family have already released public statements like "we are buying Russian weapons whenever we want, and the USA is not an instructor to us." It is rather hard to imagine that American officials will quietly watch the Russian defense industry selling more and more modern weapons, especially to those countries, which might become another target for the USA to hit.I guess everyone knows by now that Saudi Arabia is on The List. I hope their Russian weapons don't kill us all when we come knocking.
I didn't follow the news very much over the weekend, and I didn't really get online at all other than to check my email. I'm pleased to read this morning on both WaPo and Fox News that our soldiers believe they have found some indications of chemical weapons. Specifically, sarin gas. Both reports have similar information:
Meanwhile, U.S. biological and chemical weapons experts believe they may have found an Iraqi storage site for weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. officer told Reuters."Our detectors have indicated something," Major Ros Coffman, a public affairs officer with the U.S. 3rd Infantry, said of the site just south of Hindiyah. "We're talking about finding a site of possible WMD storage. This is an initial report, but it could be a smoking gun."
U.S. forces near Baghdad found around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with chemical weapons, National Public Radio reported.
The rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were "ready to fire," NPR said, attributing the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division.
It's also worth pointing out that there are many signs that Iraq moved a great deal of its WMD weaponry to Syria before we invaded, and I'm sure that this is one of the possibilities that our military will be looking into.
If this speculation turns out to be true, will we send troops into Syria to fetch the weapons back to Iraq? Possibly, but it's more likely that we will pressure Syria under the table to return the stuff. Once Iraq is stablized Syria will need to maintain much more cooperative ties to the US than it does now, and I imagine that our officials will tell Syria that there's no better time time to get started than the present. Syria gets a lot of oil via pipelines from Iraq (as does Turkey), and well, war can disrupt oil shipments for significant periods of time... if you know what I mean....
Hans Blix is curious and so is everyone else. The ex-inspector seems to think that even if Iraq does have chemical or biological weapons, they won't be used against coalition forces because "people would say, 'So, they were liars. They lied about this and there was a justification for the intervention.'" Somehow, I'm not sure that Saddam is too worried about people thinking he's a liar, when people already know he's a brutal murderer.
Still, it does surprise me that our forces haven't announced any significant WMD finds. I suspect that it's largely because they aren't looking that hard yet; there are more important things to be doing at the moment. This WaPo/ABC poll indicates that "More than two-thirds of those interviewed-69 percent-now say that the war was justified even if the United States fails to turn up biological or chemical weapons, up from 53 percent in a survey taken the day after the war started." That's pretty much how I feel, as well... but I would still like us to find something. I've been very confident in the past that Saddam has had such things, but the lack of hard evidence (that we've been shown so far, anyway) at least gives me pause.
