Nuance not Slogans for new non-New Labour Foreign Policy

Tribune : Ian Williams

Published: September 27, 2015 Last modified: September 22, 2015

As Robin Cook said, foreign policy must have an ethical dimension. He was cannily aware that nations have interests and that rules are, shall we say, guidelines. If Jeremy Corbyn is in Number 10 in the future, he too will have to confront real life ethical conundrums – and dare one commit thoughtcrime in this new age? Tony Blair was sometimes right. His action outside the United Nations chain of command in Sierra Leone was beneficial and effective in relieving the misery. He was also right over Kosovo where faced with unreasonable vetoes in the UN Security Council, it was right for Nato to threaten to invade – and if Bill Clinton had not disclaimed that option early, Slobodan Milosevic would have folded without the messy diversion of high level bombing designed to minimise American casualties. Without Blair’s efforts, the ethnically cleansed Kosovars would probably still be in refugee camps across the Balkans.

Iraq was different. The last invasion was disastrous for Iraq, the region – and for international law. As the Chilcot Inquiry should show, even through the layers of whitewash it has been accumulating over the years, it was an unnecessary and illegal war. Blair did serious damage to the growing concept of Responsibility to Protect by invoking humanitarian intervention as an excuse for Iraq, when he realised that the nebulous weapons of mass destruction were not going to solidify.

As an MP with an internationalist outlook, who has show deep concern for human rights and violations of international law, one would hope that a Corbyn administration would actively support moves to implement R2P, perhaps Kofi Annan’s greatest achievement, which is actively supported by Ban Ki-moon.

Annan got the 2005 summit of world leaders to declare that the UN’s enforcement clause, Chapter VII, is not restricted to conflicts between states, but also applies to mass violations of humanitarian law within states. That creates obligations on all members of the UN, and even more so on permanent members, to be able and ready to answer such calls for assistance. That should be taken into consideration as we correctly question the size, cost and purpose of the armed forces.

There might be pragmatic limits, but the United States veto on behalf of Israel in the Security Council should not inhibit a Labour government from taking action to deal with trade and aid for illegal settlements to implement existing resolutions.

Fulfilling Britain’s full potential in the United Nations might also involve a much more active role in the European Union. For a start, a joint declaration by Britain and France renouncing or limiting the conditions under which they use the veto could send an ethical signal to other existing or potential permanent members. On many issues, especially in the Middle East, the EU members collectively return resounding abstentions, and one reason cited has been Britain’s deference to American positions of unconditional support for Israel. More active British diplomacy would actually have a leveraged result in the general assembly and send the clear signals that Benjamin Netanyahu is currently not getting.

Which brings us to relations with the US. Pragmatically, when people talk about the special relationship in Washington it is the one with Israel, not with Britain. There is no British lobby in Congress to threaten electoral defeats.

However, it is also true that US administrations do genuinely want to have Britain onside for parlous initiatives. It is likely that British resistance to Iraq would have headed off the war instead of egging it on as Blair did.

The fervent ineptitude of Washington against Cuba and Venezuela, or indeed Putin’s Russia, should not blind us to the genuine authoritarian cast of those regimes. The 1945 Labour Government’s attitude to Russia was moulded by Moscow’s treatment of socialists in Eastern Europe and none of these icons of the far left have shown much more tolerance for dissent. A Labour prime minister has to steer between fostering delusions of grandeur of Britain’s reflected power from the so-called special relationship, and a Chomskyite world view that not a sparrow falls without the CIA targeting it. Geopolitics calls for nuance, not slogans.

Now you see It, Now you don't. Names on the Offenders' List.

United Nations Report

Although Left Off List of Offenders, Israeli Crimes Against Children Detailed in Report

By Ian Williams

Leila Zerrougui, the secretary-general’s special representative for children and armed conflict, addresses the Security Council open debate on the issue, June 18, 2015. (U.N. PHOTO/EVAN SCHNEIDER)

In the preceding article, Jonathan Cook details some of the issues surrounding the intense American pressure on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to drop mention of Israel from the report on Children and Armed Conflict. It was all the more appalling since the agent for the pressure was Samantha Power, who previously had enjoyed a good reputation for her concerns for international humanitarian law.

Although Israel was excised from the list of offenders in the front of the report—ironically along with Hamas, as a trade off—the U.N. Human Rights officers made sure that it was mentioned copiously in the body of evidence presented, reducing Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., to paroxysms of percentages. Interestingly, he did not even try to rebut any of the allegations specifically, but rather resorted to abstract statistics—Israel got 11 percent of the report’s attention while Syria only had 6 percent. Prosor attacked the U.N. special representative, Leila Zerrougui, for “widespread, systematic and institutionalized biased conduct against Israel.” 

The battle over the excision of Israel from the list seemed to be denting Ban’s usually well-deserved reputation for integrity, even though his spokesman Stephane Dujarric was at pains to point out to press that the specific incidents of Israeli harm to children were still detailed in the body of the report.

Indeed the report is quite explicit. It reports, along with many detailed incidents  from last summer’s conflict, that:

“87. On average, between 8 July and 26 August, more than 10 children were killed daily in Gaza. More than 80 percent of the children were killed between 17 July and 5 August during the ground incursion by the Israeli security forces. At least 13 children in Gaza were reportedly killed as a result of rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that fell inside Gaza.

“88. At least 2,955 Palestinian children were injured in Gaza. Preliminary estimates indicate that up to 1,000 of them will be permanently disabled. Apart from the July-August Israeli military operation, another 76 children were injured.”

However, on the day of the report, Ban  redeemed himself when he told told press: “I am aware of the controversy surrounding the report. I want to express once again my full support for my Special Representative, Ms. Leila Zerrougui, and the excellent work that she and her team have done.”

And at the introduction of the report to the Security Council he specifically singled out Israel, stating, “I am also deeply alarmed at the suffering of so many children as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza last year.

“I urge Israel to take concrete and immediate steps, including by reviewing existing policies and practices, to protect and prevent the killing and maiming of children, and to respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals.”

The net result of Ambassador Power’s hypersensitivity on behalf of Israel was that the country she was intending to protect was singled out more than ever! Part of the package that Washington urged on Ban and the U.N. was that the U.S. needed to get Israel taken off the list in order to ease the passage of any agreement on Iran though Congress. Ban, under attack from both sides, is in an invidious position. He needs the cooperation of the U.S. to achieve many of the objectives he wants for the U.N., and he wants the deal on Iran.

The Israeli Spoke

In yet another example of Israel being the spoke in the wheel of diplomacy, the U.N.’s regular review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was even more inconclusive than before. With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu making so much noise about Iran’s alleged nuclear effort, it takes a lot of chutzpah for congressmen ganging up on Tehran to support the one country in the Middle East which has not signed the NPT and which scarcely makes a secret of its possession of a large nuclear arsenal.

The signatory members of the NPT met this summer at the U.N. to denounce the official nuclear powers—Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S.—for not taking the steps toward disarmament that they promised at the time they persuaded the rest of the world to renounce nuclear weapons. It’s their hypocrisy that India, Pakistan and North Korea cited when they went nuclear. Israel keeps quiet about it, of course, officially neither confirming nor denying its nuclear arsenal, but making sure that everyone knows about it.

In 1995, the NPT was scheduled to expire unless it was renewed, and members extracted some promises from the nuclear powers in return for extending it indefinitely. One of the concessions was the call for “the establishment of an effectively verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and their delivery systems.”

Egypt had been asking for this since 1990, and it was an expansion of the proposal that had been passed annually by the U.N. General Assembly since 1980 for a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East. At the 2010 NPT Review Conference the countries agreed to start implementing the Middle East Conference, and Britain, Russia and the U.S. agreed to work with the U.N. secretary-general to hold a regional conference on it in 2012.

When 2012 came around, however, the U.S. just postponed the conference, blaming “conditions in the Middle East” and vaguely suggesting there was lack of agreement on “acceptable conditions” by the would-be attendees. Of course, there was one state, unnamed, that would only agree to a nuclear-free region if it were the sole state excluded from the conclusions. In fact, Israel is not a signatory of the NPT—but Iran is.

Even the current unappetizing Egyptian regime maintains some principles. It reintroduced its call for a conference on a Nuclear Free Middle East into the preparations for this year’s NPT Review conference. This is, of course, an entirely laudable principle. After all, if everyone in the region eschews nuclear weaponry, then there is really no excuse for any country in the region to have them. 

In the classic way of global governance, diplomats worked around the clock to obscure the issues, but Cairo persevered and secured the language in the draft document for this year’s conference that called for the secretary-general to convene a conference on a WMD-free zone by March 2016. That would have avoided the implicit veto of having the U.S., Britain and Russia as convenors.

The United States, Britain and Canada decided not to support the draft final document from the NPT review conference because of the deadline. Speaking at the conference, Washington said it objected because the plan to set an agenda and hold a conference was not based on “consensus and equality,” and that the document proposed “unworkable conditions” and “arbitrary deadlines.” Canada, in its new role as being more pro-Israel even than the U.S., wanted Israel to be included in the negotiations for the nuclear-free zone even though Tel Aviv is not even a signatory to the NPT, so hardly in a legal or ethical position to demand a place at the table.

It seems eminently reasonable of the members attending to put a deadline on a process that the U.S. has repeatedly postponed.

As always, however, there is one law for Israel and one for everybody else.

The hypocrisy is stunning. To summarize: the permanent five, who all possess nuclear weapons, feign commitment to disarming—while modernizing their nuclear weapons systems. They continue to maintain sanctions on Iran for allegedly taking tentative steps toward refining nuclear fuel that could be used for weaponry. But Britain and the U.S. effectively vetoed a conference that sought to set up a nuclearfree zone in the region because Israel, which is a non-signatory to the NPT and has nuclear weapons, did not want them to. If there is any ethical principle there, it is very well hidden indeed.

All of the parties concerned know that Israel has nuclear weapons. They know that the whole purpose of the procrastination and obfuscation is to avoid Israel having to admit that. It is somehow perplexing that Egypt, despite massive military aid from the U.S., has the chutzpah to be independent on such issues, while the U.S., despite its massive military aid to Israel, does exactly what Israel orders.

Welcome to the Wonderland of international diplomacy. ❑

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Primary Discolours!

Primary Follies

Written By: Ian Williams

Published: June 29, 2014 Last modified: June 25, 2014

It is fitting that the Tea Party has a completely fictional symbolism for its ideology. In reality, Sam Adams and the other “patriots” were throwing duty free tea overboard in Boston Harbour to preserve their monopoly of smuggled – and thus more expensive – tea in the New England markets. But the Tea Party’s aversion to paying taxes of any kind, to anyone, does represent a consistent string to the tea bag story.
This month, the Tea Party combined with the American system of primary elections to mount yet another tangential triumph sending all sorts of contradictory messages. The number two Republican in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, lost his bid to be the Republican candidate for his Virginia seat. It is measure of the age of unreason that Cantor, a poisonously reactionary shill for moneyed interests, appeared as a moderate when the Tea Party united to defeat the seven-term incumbent. It is almost heartening that he lost despite being backed by lots of campaign funding from the businesses he did so much to serve during his time in Washington.
There are many lessons from this about American politics. Cantor is so far to the right that he would have been almost unelectable 40 years ago, even in Virginia. In those days, the South was virulently racist, but it was quite appreciative of populist government measures that benefited the white poor and middle class. When the Republicans re-conquered the South from the old Dixiecrats, Cantor helped to bring a virulent neo-liberal ideology to the South, and from that base tried with some considerable success to impose it on the rest of the country. It is the combination of Dixie racism and Ronald Reagan’s California neoliberalism that has reshaped the global political landscape.
For ideologues like Cantor, the racist dog whistle was just a convenient tool to persuade poor and middle-class white Southerners to vote for their own economic destruction, and so he made two big mistakes: one was to be relatively rational on immigration reform, and the other was to be too visibly interested in national politics. In the words of former House Speaker Tip O’Neill: “All politics is local” – and Cantor neglected his base, concentrating on his national ambitions, both personal and political. The successful Tea Party candidate emphasised that – and also Cantor’s subservience to the banks. It has to be said that few, if any, successful Tea Party candidates vote against big money when they take office – but they do talk about it.
Little remarked in the American media, the vote also represents a major defeat for the Israel lobby, for which Cantor was a fervent advocate. The lobby often claims success in overthrowing any candidate who had been in the slightest way critical of Israeli policies, but they are keeping understandably quiet about their abject failure to keep Cantor in power, which is a double failure since the lobby’s reputation rests on its ability to marshal funding for or against candidates. In this case, the well-funded Cantor’s loss signals that money is not necessarily everything in an election.
The success of the “insurgent” Tea Party candidate has emboldened many other contenders, so the inner-part conflict within the Republican Party will be accentuated even more, as two sets of reality-challenged reactionaries battle within it for dominance. The reaction of what passes for “moderate” candidates will be to adopt even more hardline positions – in effect, granting ideological victory to the rabid wing of the party.
However, these primary victories are within a small subset of the voters. The turnout for the primary elections is very low at the best of times, so a small, motivated group of voters can choose a party’s official candidates – who the majority of the actual voters in the general election might well find irrational and unsupportable.
Once again, the loopiness of the primary system comes into play. In many states, there are open primaries – which means that you do not even have to be a nominal supporter of a party to vote in its primary to pick the candidates. So now so-called moderate Republicans are trying to persuade black and Latino voters to support them in primaries against the more extremist Tea Party candidates.
Do Ed Miliband and his advisors really know the practical consequences of their zeal for primary elections?

Pots, Kettles, and Situation in Syria black!

WRMEA, May 2014, Pages 14-15

United Nations Report

It Helps to Have Moral Authority When Criticizing Perpetrators, Passive Onlookers

By Ian Williams

Syria poses a classic dilemma for the United Nations. It cannot do anything opposed by a permanent member of the Security Council, in this case Russia. But there is another dimension, as former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali eloquently complained: the U.N. has no army, no police force of its own. It cannot act unless member states provide the wherewithal for it to do so.

The countries who are prepared, or able, to commit substantial forces are not necessarily those best politically or ethically suited to operations. While Moscow, with help from Iran, has actively provided support for Syria’s military and Bashar al-Assad’s morale, we have to ask about the failings of the rest of the world, and in particular the West.

Diplomacy is interconnected. Washington’s tacit continuation of the Cold War after Glasnost exacts a price, fueling Rus­sian revanchism, and a desire to tweak the Eagle’s feathers. Hardly an occasion has been missed to humiliate Moscow. It is true that Russian rulers have often behaved stupidly and reflexively, playing to populist resentment at home, but they have surely been provoked—and the rewards for being sensible have not been so great.

It began with Russian support for Desert Storm, which was a huge breakthrough. (Indeed it is worth remembering that Syrian troops also played a role in that first Iraq war.) Sergei Lavrov was Russia’s permanent representative to the U.N. at that time, and he smarted under the combined humiliations of the West’s insistence on taking Iraq resolutions farther than their clear intent, and the maintenance of brutal sanctions when they had lost international support.

Russia’s invention of an Orthodox International to be the ghost of the Comintern has certainly trapped it into a geopolitical tangle from which it sometimes has difficulty extricating itself. It went along with sanctions against Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic because it was clear to all but a coterie of leftists and nationalists that Belgrade’s actions were beyond the pale of international law. But then it ended up supporting him in ways that persuaded him, like Assad, to continue in his course of action.

The West’s reaction was equally shortsighted and presaged Syria. Secretary of State James Baker thought the U.S. did not have a dog in the fight. Britain and France assumed that the Bosnians would lie down and die, expeditiously, so if it were done, it were best done quickly. They feinted, providing U.N. peacekeepers who did not keep the peace but collaborated in the Serb siege of Sarajevo, while monitoring and counting how many shells were rained down on civilians.

Hardly an occasion has been missed to humiliate Moscow.

While we deservedly point the finger at Russia, in Rwanda the only dog in the fight barked in French. Paris supported the murderous regime and nobody else cared enough to intervene. Countries withdrew their forces and left the few behind isolated and at risk, doing their best to protect the victims.

It is in fact difficult to see a way out of the Syrian crisis in the absence of any credible actors with any moral authority. There are so many double standards that observers could easily grow cross-eyed. The U.S. is hopelessly compromised by the military, financial and diplomatic support it provides for lawless behavior by Israel, whose intervention in turn would possibly have only one positive outcome—uniting Syrians against it. The U.S., if not hampered by the Israel lobby, could make up to Iran and break the spurious unity of Alawite and Shi’i, but under the influence of the same lobby the U.S. was putting distance between itself and Turkey, which could have taken action—except, perhaps, for its less-than-exemplary behavior toward the Kurds, who straddle the regional boundaries.

In the end, where there has been action, it is because world public opinion turned against both the perpetrators and the passivity of the onlookers. That did not work too well in the case of Darfur, of course. However, it seems to be at least one of the principles behind Ban Ki-moon’s increasingly strong statements.

When he was running for the office, U.N. Secretary-General Ban pledged full support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and for the concept of “Responsibility to Protect,” steered through the U.N. by his predecessor, Kofi Annan. Ban was sincere to the point of career suicide, since the temporary U.S. “permanent representative” at the time was none other than John Bolton, the paleocon who had made it his life work to destroy the ICC—and, for that matter, the United Nations.

Ban’s restrained delivery, sadly, means that his statements are not always taken as strongly as intended. In some ways this is a diplomatic plus. He can tell the truth without being mortally insulting to those he tells the truth about, which is indispensable in offering the U.N.’s intermediary services.

His statement in March went far beyond what most previous U.N. officials would have dared to say about a sovereign state. “Three years ago, the Syrian people stood up in peaceful protest to demand their universal rights and freedoms. In response came brutal force, escalating bloodshed and the devastation of civil war,” he declared, putting the blame clearly on the Assad regime.

“Syria is now the biggest humanitarian and peace and security crisis facing the world,” he went on, “with violence reaching unthinkable levels. Syria’s neighbors are bearing the increasingly unbearable humanitarian, security, political and socioeconomic effects of this conflict.”

Ban said he “deeply regrets the inability of the international community, the region and the Syrians themselves to put a stop to this appalling conflict,” and appealed “to the region and the international community, and in particular to the Russian Federation and the United States as the initiating states of the Geneva Conference on Syria, to take clear steps to re-energize the Geneva process.”

So the secretary-general was not just pointing the finger at the parties in the conflict, but also at the other United Nations members who have failed the Syrian people. Valerie Amos, the U.N. under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was even more forthright, adding, “Our collective voice should be raised in protest at the flagrant violations of international humanitarian and human rights law…The international community needs to show the courage and determination to do all that is necessary to reach a political solution. Without that, we will see years more of destruction and continued brutality meted out to the people of Syria.”

It would, of course, be easy to dismiss this as empty rhetoric. But it is in fact more substantial rhetoric than the U.N. exhibited in the past, when under the shield of sovereignty and cowardice it kept its peace about the Balkans and Rwanda.

Ban has been equally forthright on the Palestinian question, calling out Israeli breaches of resolutions, the embargo on Gaza, etc.—at a time, one might add, when Egypt, a member of the Arab League, has been colluding in keeping the Strip isolated.

Some naming and shaming is certainly called for. In this benighted age, there are few independent moral figures. One could not even be sure that the late Nelson Mandela, whose gratitude for support against apartheid sometimes over-rode his ethical sense, as in his support for Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, would get this right.

That makes it even more important for a figure like Ban Ki-moon, backed perhaps by the “The Elders,” the group of statespeople set up by Mandela and Kofi Annan, to call on the various capitals—beginning with Moscow and Tehran— to act, to tell Assad that his time is up.

But that will only be the beginning. If there is a post-regime period, it will need international support. That would be a good time to call Moscow’s bluff—and invite the Russian army to send contingents of peacekeepers to the force that will be needed to maintain security in Syria.

Of course, Crimea does not assist. Moscow denies the right of Kosovars, after ethnic cleansing and massacres, to secede from the state that tried to drive them out. Washington tacitly supports the right of Israel to annex Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights and displace the indigenous inhabitants.

American negotiators back Israel in its attempt to redraw the internationally accepted 1967 line, but Washington condemns Moscow’s (rather clumsy) attempt to redress arbitrary borders drawn up by a Communist-ruled Kremlin. There are even echoes of Palestine in the Crimea: who should vote in a referendum? The Crimeans, who were driven out en masse by Stalin, or the settlers who came in afterward?

And that brings us to the birth of the United Nations. Following World War II, the key principle—evoked in the Middle East resolutions, surviving in East Timor and Western Sahara and invoked in Kuwait—is the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force. By moving in troops in large quantities and staging a dubious referendum in Crimea, Putin is breaking a cardinal principle on which the shaky post-war peace has depended. Boundaries are not sacred: they can be renegotiated, they can be arbitrated and litigated—and, in truth, the Crimean boundary is far less sacred than many others.

But the prospect of changing them by force, or with the threat of force, is what united the Security Council against Russia, which was forced to use its veto on March 14.

Putin united the world against Moscow. Yes, the U.S. invaded Panama, Grenada, Vietnam and more, but it pulled out afterward. If Saddam Hussain had just installed a friendly regime in Kuwait and pulled out, he would not have united the world against him.

Russia might not suffer military consequences from its actions, but it has orchestrated diplomatic disaster for itself and others. Watch out for a referendum in the settlement zone, citing the Putin precedent. But it will make no difference. Like Morocco and Israel, Russia might have possession, but the overwhelming majority of U.N. members will not recognize it. Ban should wait to talk to an elected Ukrainian government that one hopes will blunt the influence of the nationalists whose rhetoric and actions have done so much to foment separatism in Crimea.

An ethical foreign policy?

  I use Grammarly's plagiarism checker because it shows me who is copying my work!

 Sanity prevails over Iran

by Ian Williams

Tribune Monday, December 2nd, 2013

Iran’s nuclear agreement recalls Robin Cook’s statement about foreign policy having an ethical dimension, often misquoted as “an ethical foreign policy.” Cook realised that ethics was just one of several dimensions. The Iran imbroglio almost has as many tangled dimensions as string theory – with the ethical one hard to find. Even the Israeli stock markets bounced upwards on news of the Iranian accord, showing the invisible hand in a better light than the long faces of Benjamin Netanyahu and his ideological supporters in the United States Congress at the reduced prospects of Armageddon in the Middle East.
Sanity is to be treasured wherever it can be found, not least because it seems a rare commodity. Barack Obama and John Kerry deserve congratulations for standing up against Netanyahu and his supporters in Washington.
One does not have to love the ayatollahs and their theocracy to sympathise with Iran, whose pariah status in its own right could be considered hard-earned, not least over its immoral and expedient support for the regime in Damascus.
But any objective perspective on Iran has to step back to include its opponents in the overview. Why is it that the loudest yelps against Iran’s alleged nuclear capability come from Israel, a state that itself has a large nuclear arsenal? Why do the claims that Iran is a threat to peace come from the same state which has noisily and repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, in between inciting the US to do so?
The West backed a bloody invasion of Iran by Iraq under Saddam Hussein, involving the proven use of chemical weapons and gas. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Western powers rammed through the punishing reparations to the Gulf States, which are still being paid by Saddam’s victims, the people of Iraq.
A United Nations commission determined that Iraq was the aggressor against Iran, which was scarcely needed, since it was so obvious. However, when I asked an Iranian diplomat at the UN why it did not leverage that aggression finding into first dibs on the Iraqi compensation payments to the Gulf States, he said that all Iran wanted was the vindication. It puts in context Teheran’s punctiliousness about international recognition of its legal right to have a nuclear enrichment programme, even if it agrees not to exercise it. It is a pattern that befits a theocracy.
India, which is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, developed its nuclear weapons and then voted at the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the Security Council for a civil nuclear programme that was within the NPT terms. In return, the US, in effect, gave up nuclear sanctions against India, with its declared arsenal, to enlist support against Iran, which has repeatedly declared it has no ambitions for a weapons programme and whose supreme leader has actually issued a fatwa against them.
Incidentally, while there is undoubted repression of journalists and dissidents in Iran, I actually told Iranian television, live, that even if the Iranians had the legal right to, they should not have a civil nuclear programme because it was environmentally damaging and economically devastating. They have had me back on their screens often since.
One can sincerely doubt whether any country, let alone Iran, needs a civil nuclear programme. Certainly, the costs that British consumers have been saddled with for electricity from the planned nuclear generators should raise questions about how economic such power is.
The cost of energy is clearly a factor in all this. I pointed out on Iranian TV that Iran was importing refined petroleum products because it lacked the technology to process the oil it was pumping.
The Gulf States, whose treatment of religious minorities, women and dissenters makes the ayatollahs seem positively liberated, have been supporting Israeli and the US bellicosity – behind the scenes, of course, since it ill befits the custodian of the two shrines to incite a unbeliever’s attack on a Muslim nation. Would Obama have dared thwart them and the Israeli lobby at the same time if natural gas had not relieved the US from its long-time energy dependence?
We can be pleased that Obama and Kerry have pulled off a deal and averted the immediate threat of war. But why should common sense be such a long-winded process? And how did shallow expedience so often hold it up?

SPURNING THE PRIZE!

The Saudi decision to refuse its Security Council seat is as idiosyncratic as one would expect from an absolute monarchy that names its country after its own clan. It is even possible the King did not know what his foreign ministry was doing when they campaigned for a seat.  The last time Saudi  Arabia made a bid for serious UN glory was in 1991 when its UN Ambassador Samir Shihabi ran for President of the General Assembly, overturning the expected candidate, Papua New Guinea. The quip at the time was that most of the hands raised for the Saudi candidacy had a Rolex on their wrists.

More seriously, it showed the dilemma for a Saudi regime of trying to look after its home constituency and yet pander to its essential foreign backers. One of Shihabi’s first tasks was to preside over the special meeting of the General Assembly called by George H W Bush to rescind the “Zionism is Racism” resolution of the UN. Shihabi absented himself from the meeting - as in fact so did the Israeli ambassador since Israel saw the move as Bush’s attempt to win over AIPAC after refusing the loan guarantees that the Israelis wanted to build settlements with.

That hints at the reasoning behind the shocking decision.  Saudi diplomacy by its very nature has to be somewhat duplicitous. It wants Iran hobbled, for example, but cannot be seen supporting an attack on a Muslim country. On the Israeli issues it would have to confront its existential ally, the US, publicly, or go along with that  many more where its domestic Wahabi base would be unhappy if the Saudi representative voted the foreign ministry’s head rather than the Imam’s heart. So perhaps the decision is not so shocking after all!

On balance, of course, the Security Council will benefit from a Saudi absence. It might be occasionally correct on Middle Eastern issues but on almost everything else it is solidly on the side of reaction with little to recommend it except oil and money.

The Road To - And Fro- Damascus

Tribune  17 May 2013

The Road To - And Fro- Damascus
The old anecdote about the directions given to a lost traveller in Ireland often applies to international affairs, but with added force to Syria.  “If I was you, I wouldn’t be startin’ from here!”  There is almost no conceivable happy outcome to the inferno in Syria, and although there must be some happier conclusions than others, no one will ever be sure that the roads not taken might have been better.

In part, ordinary Syrians are paying the price for the maladroit handling of  the earlier intervention in Libya - and indeed in Iraq.  Blair and Bush’s great adventure in Iraq understandably soured the enthusiasm of much of the world for intervention in general. One does not have to subscribe to the crazed leftist defence of bourgeois sovereignty that would have led some people to picket the Normandy landings, nor even listen to the supporters and deniers of genocide in the Balkans, to see that the Iraq invasion was unjustified and its outcome was disastrous.

Russian evocation of Libya to justify inaction in Syria is expediently amoral. Russia agreed to NATO involvement in Libya, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian FM, with his long experience as Moscow’s man at the UN, must have been well aware of how far NATO would take it. The Russians abstained partly because the Arab League was behind the UN resolution, and also because the much unloved Qaddafi had threatened to wipe out the rebels in Benghazi. Those who point out that there was some ambiguity in the actual wording of the threat, should bear in mind that there had been plentiful evidence over the years of his willingness to eliminate enemies as his prison massacre of 1998.

While the UN Resolution on Libya did not specifically endorse regime change, in the real world, faced with a deranged and murderous dictator what other logical result was there?  However, the West clearly should have done much more to involve and thus implicate  Russia, and the failure to do so added heft and sharpness to the chip on Moscow’s shoulders that weighs so heavily on its foreign policy. After all, if the UK and France have still not got over their long-lost Superpower status, Russia certainly has a much more recent excuse for post-power peevishness.

Which brings us back to the Superpower itself. In Washington the Republican opposition could have been making hay with the administration’s failure to develop a coherent policy towards Syria.  Instead, however, they are beating a dead horse that has no interest from the electorate and little connection with the real world. In their incestuous universe, the big issue is not Damascus, but Benghazi and the killing of the US diplomat there last year.  It gives them an obsessive stick with which to beat Hillary Clinton.

To be fair, there is little that the Obama administration could do directly in Syria with the historical baggage the US has accumulated over the years. The interventions in the Muslim world, even when not malicious have tended to be maladroit and all too often counterproductive by any standards. But if not the US, who?

Enter the UN - once again as diplomatic cover. Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian diplomat who succeeded Kofi Annan as the UN representative has been considering quitting. His reasons are obvious and honorable: firstly the UN is not a negotiator, rather as Ban Ki Moon says, it is a facilitator. It can provide the ladder for the various parties to climb down from their trees. But as Annan once said, diplomacy is very effective, when backed by the threat of sufficient force.

Currently neither the US, nor the Europeans can muster enough persuasion to get the Russians to lean on their ally Al-Assad. The Russians are providing enough diplomatic and military coverage to keep him fighting even if doing so empowers the Islamists in the opposition and increasingly imperils the position of the Alawites and other minorities.  The US is unable to stop its Israeli tail wagging, and the UN, Bank Ki Moon and Lakhdar Brahimi, without a unified global community behind them are reduced to calling for a ceasefire but have no means to enforce one.

It comes down to US. With all its faults, financially enfeebled, morally tainted and militarily entangled as it is, only the White House has the power to browbeat and cajole an international consensus that could stop the fighting, even if that implies having the strength to say pretty please to Moscow, to guarantee security to the various factions.

It needs a UN resolution, it needs  a no fly zone and eventually, probably boots on the ground - from almost anywhere except Europe and the US. One almost has pipe dreams of a joint Russian-Turkish peacekeeping operation, but more likely the conflict will just drag on until it spills over into the rest of the region.

Labour Lemmings Sell Lemons

Labour Lemmings should Follow Washington Reverse
Tribune 1st August
Ian Williams


The ordinary average lemming has an excuse for following everyone else off the cliff, but what kind of lemming keeps on running when it sees the guys in front peeling off before the precipice? Well a New Labour lemming would be one such.

In the US, the high tide of laisser-faire is receding rapidly as even Republicans can see what Wall Street unrestrained has wrought. In the UK, New Labour ministers are thinking of even more privatizations, more ways to get the City’s greedy snouts firmly planted into the public trough.

New Labour’s views on these issues came from a combination of the shared awe of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair for American enterprise – and the latter’s puppy love for Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher was not that much of an economic ideologue. For example, she had never quibbled about comprehensive schools when she was Education Minister, and drew back from privatising railways. However, she was determined to break the back of the Labour Party, and she knew that the unions were essential to it (an apercu that escaped her admiring successor Tony Blair).

Her dissolution of state industries to break the back of their unions, together with the distribution of discount shares to consumers of utilities and the sale of council houses was intended to create a whole new property-owning conservative constituency while breaking Labour’s foundations.

Keith Joseph added the ideological veneer, invoking Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, which also succeeded in usurping the international financial institutions.

The expat Labour Party branch in New York used to write regularly to the New York Times to challenge their epithet machine that regularly described Thatcher as the “British Prime Minister who privatised the loss-making state industries.” Unavailingly, we pointed out that the companies she sold off, cheaply to her friends in the City, were in fact making loads of money. BP, British Gas and the rest were profitable and well-run businesses. In fact, studies showed that they actually had better earnings in the public domain than they did when their Executives started looting them for outrageous salaries and stock options.

We should remember the other pressures. This month, I was remembering the old Clause 4, and its invocation of the “best obtainable system of popular administration and control” of industry. As an old customer of the mutually owned Bradford and Bingley Building Society, I voted against its conversion to a company, but took the shares when offered. They are now trading down at one sixth their price, giving me wry thoughts on the vaunted superiority of corporate management.

I used to be on the executive of what is now the RMT, and I cannot put my hand on my heart and declare that state ownership, per se, was idyllic. The Treasury, traditionally the bane of any long term public enterprise, used the state-owned industries to regulate wages, and switched major capital expenditure plans on or off as a regulator for the economy at large.

On the other hand, while BR managers had their faults, but most of them had a public service ethos. If they had had access to the grants that flow to the privately owned rail companies, they would have done a much better job, much more cheaply, and with fares that are far more reasonable. The rail companies get almost six times more government money than British Rail.

No more than rail passengers faced with another weekend without service console themselves with the thought that at least the shareholders are making a mint, British customers of privatised water faced with escalating prices and erratic quality may not consider public ownership automatically bad,

“Market forces” translated to paying the former managements of state enterprise huge bonuses and salary rises to run the same business when taken private. They dictated that workers are best kept in line with the stick while the asses who lead need fat juicy carrots.

In fact, New York City, whose water supply is still municipally-owned, has spent billions since 1970 on a fifty-year tunnelling project that few if any companies would consider. If I go to Washington, I go on federally owned Amtrak. The buses and trains of New York and most metropolitan regions are firmly in public hands, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, running one of the biggest ports in the world is in public ownership – if barely under public control.

In reaction to collateralised mortgage bonds, Enron, the rescue of Bear Sterns and other debacles, there is a growing demand in the US for stronger state direction. Socialism for big corporations is to be extended to citizens. If the freewheeling financial entrepreneurs demand that the tax-payers cough up to rescue them from their own folly, they can hardly cry foul when the government decides to regulate their affairs more closely.

Even in the heartland of capitalism, politicians are calling time on the depredations of naked greed. The once globally dominant “Washington Consensus”, is clearly failing. Chancellor Brown had the excuse of needing to stroke the bankers to keep the ship of state stable in the open seas of the global economy. Prime Minister Brown has no need. He really must show how he can go with the change of the tide in his American model and articulate the vision that lurks, euphemised, even in Tony Blair’s anodyne rephrasing of Clause 4.

Green Menace

From Comment is Free Guardian 14 April 2008

A small correction is in order, apparently the Senator is not actually a member of DSA, although he spoke at their convention and happily accepts donations _ Ian W.


In a country where many socialists seem to prefer sniping from academic ivory towers to active involvement in the political process, most Americans are blithely unaware of the US Senate's first and only avowed socialist. In Britain, Bernie Sanders would be a media celebrity like Tony Benn or Claire Short. In the US, the junior senator from Vermont is equally free with his strongly held opinions, but he would have to be caught tapping his feet in an airport toilet stall to hit the talk shows.

Brooklyn-born Sanders moved to Vermont in 1964, becoming mayor of Burlington in 1981. He represented the state in the House of Representatives from 1988 until 2006 when he won the Senate seat at the age of 65.

It's not as if he did it as a stealth socialist. Sanders is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who represent the US at the Socialist International - but do not put up candidates of their own. Even so, his flat urban vowels, his challenged coiffure and couture, with his arresting look from behind his glasses combine to make him almost a stereotype of the earnest Brooklyn socialist intellectual who made his own way from the tenements.

But in Vermont, he is "Bernie", and hard work and palpable sincerity more than make for his serious demeanour and lack of gladhanding.

Perhaps fortunately for him, the tiny hard left in the US wants nothing to do with him and his pragmatic Old Labourish policies. When he (along with most of the European socialists) supported intervention in Kosovo, some of his staff resigned in protest.

Technically he is listed as "Independent", but he is no Lone Ranger. He takes the Democratic whip and co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus - a 72-member grouping of the lower house's most liberal members and the biggest such grouping on the Hill.

He speaks fondly of Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, discounting the suggestion that his five committees - "excellent assignments" for a junior senator - may be a consequence of his strategic importance to the wafer-thin Democratic majority. In his early terms in the House he used to tell his more conservative Democratic colleagues exactly what he thought of their timidity, but his approach has mellowed, not necessarily because they moved left, but because the Republicans went so far right.

Now, he sees some cause for optimism. "We've had probably the most right-wing government in the United States in modern history - perhaps forever," he says. "A year ago, extreme right wingers like Tom Delay and Bill Frist were running the Senate and House - but that's been pushed back."

But, as he often does, he immediately qualifies his enthusiasm: "I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said that a Democratic victory in the House or Senate gave us a progressive Congress. It's a lot better than a right-wing extremist government, but it is a centrist government over which big money has a lot of influence."

He concludes: "We still have a long way to go to develop a government which is going to represent the working families and middle classes of America." (British readers should note that the American "middle class" encompasses almost anyone with a regular job.)

Which leaves the question: what's so different about Vermont that it can send Sanders to the Senate? While admitting that on issues like healthcare, the example of nearby Canada helps, the senator does not think that his rural state is an aberration. "It about class," he declares. His electoral support is based on pragmatic and political attention to his constituents' economic interests. "In Vermont, and elsewhere, the most serious economic problem facing America is the collapse of the middle class. The vast majority of Americans have suffered a decline in their standard of living and we are engaged in a race to the bottom."

He shoots off the staccato statistics with the ease of frequent practice: since Bush took office, five million more Americans live in poverty, three million more have lost their pensions, seven million more have lost their health insurance and median household income is now $2,000 less. "That's the dynamic of the American economy. It's not talked about very often by the corporate media, not often discussed in Congress."

Implicitly he condemns many of his Democratic colleagues and suggests that their refusal to address such crass economic issues allows conservatives to trap them into fighting on the forlorn battlefield of social and cultural issues. He charges that "the media plutocracy in this country has tried to establish that you are liberal if you are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, and you are a conservative if you are against those."

Some liberals take him to task for voting against some gun-control legislation. "It's less of an issue now," he shrugs, and he points to Vermont's zero gun-control laws, high gun-ownership "and one of the lowest crime rates in the country".

So he opposed tort liability for gun makers and supports guns for hunting but voted against allowing "the import of assault rifles whose sole purpose is to kill people, and most hunters think so as well," which does not stop the NRA from giving him its lowest rating.

That does not mean he indulges in gratuitous red-neckery to win votes. "I'm probably one of the strongest environmentalists in the Senate," he notes, "and I have a 100% voting record on human rights and gay rights, civil rights," he declares matter-of-factly with no false modesty.

But, he returns inexorably to his theme, if the Democrats pounded away at the impoverishment of working Americans, the "tax breaks for the billionaires, the corporate welfare that goes to the oil industry and the banks and other big entities they could have a lot more success than they have had".

He explains their failure to do so: "As elections get more and more expensive, you have people in the Senate and House spending huge amounts of time raising money from the wealthiest people, listening to their concerns, and ignoring the needs of the middle class and working class."

But Sanders counters with his own example: "If you stand for something, you can raise money even in this corrupt campaign system." He relied on over 50,000 grassroots contributors to win two-to-one against a wealthy Republican "who spent more money per voter on the campaign than anyone else in the history of Senate elections". But he sadly accepts the likelihood of his colleagues going to the business interests, because that's where the money is.

Sanders points to real examples to demonstrate the feasibility of his programmes - "the many achievements that democratic socialist governments have made over the years in Europe and Scandinavia such as the various types of national healthcare systems. We're the only industrialised country in the world that does not have one, and yet we spend twice as much on healthcare as any other country."

He lists the benefits of European welfare states with envy at their achievement but indignation that "they are beyond anything the average American could dream of. In America, 18% of our children live in poverty, in Scandinavia it's 3 or 4 %."

So with a Democrat Senate, House, and an impending possible Democrat in the White House, can we expect a national health system soon? Sanders is careful to point out the obstacles: "I'm not much into speculation, but the power of the insurance companies is incredible and the power of the pharmaceutical companies is even more so - probably the most powerful lobby in the world. And they've spent hundreds of millions on lobbying and campaign contributions."

And in that context, he laconically ranks the major Democratic primary contenders. He considered John Edwards the "most progressive", but with Edwards having made an early exit he deems Barack Obama to be to Hillary Clinton's left. Although he thinks one of them is going to win the presidency, "even then, developing public policy that defends the middle class and working families will be extraordinarily difficult because of the power of big money over the Congress."

All At Sea in Washington

Guardian Comment is Free on the Law of the Sea and US ratification

Chinese veto wrong - like the US's

A quote to put the Chinese veto in perspective... from IPS and the Asia Times

"Taking a different perspective, Ian William, w says that even though there is no justification for China to use its veto to protect a universally condemned regime, he sees a parallel in the United States using its own veto to protect its ally Israel over the last decades.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Williams told IPS, Washington has been adding annually to its veto total and will soon outrun the former USSR's tally of "Nyets".

China is doing itself no favors in using its vetoes for issues like Sudan and Burma, which are surely peripheral to its national interests, and Beijing seems to be realizing that it is getting close to calls for boycott of next year's Olympics, which would be an additional blow to its prestige.

"But it is understandable that it should want to emulate its number one debtor, the United States which has devalued the veto by using it for resolutions which often actually reflect longstanding U.S. policy on Israel, over settlements, Jerusalem and so on," noted Williams.

Ironically, it is that same support for Israel which has caused the United States to disregard its own innovation, the "Uniting For Peace" procedure by which issues stuck in the Security Council could be taken up by the General Assembly.

Williams said the United States invented it during the Korean War -- but declared it non-binding after Palestine invoked it to bypass "unreasonable" U.S. vetoes in the Council.

"In Kosovo, in Sudan, in Bosnia, the procedure could have been used to save lives, but Washington has effectively disarmed the United Nations in order to protect Israeli -- not U.S. -- interests," added Williams, who also writes for the Nation."

full article

ASEAN Backs Neither U.S. nor China over Burma
Sat, 2007-10-06 12:59

By Thalif Deen - Inter Press Service

United Nations, 06 Octeber, (IPS): The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Burma (Myanmar) is a member, is refusing to see eye-to-eye either with the United States or China on how the international community should deal with the ongoing crisis in the politically-troubled military-run country.

Speaking as chair of ASEAN, Ambassador Vanu Gopala Menon of Singapore told the Security Council Friday the military repression in Burma "cannot just be an internal matter" -- a view diametrically opposed to that of China.

At the same time, he said, he can understand the impulse to punish unacceptable behavior, even though ASEAN should not rule this out.

"But we have to pause to consider dispassionately what the real impact of additional sanctions will be?" he asked, expressing skepticism over a proposed move by the United States and Western nations to impose mandatory sanctions on Burma as a punishment for its repression.

"How will they affect a regime that is only tangentially connected to the rest of the world? Will they help or hinder the U.N.'s role?" he asked. "And what is their impact on the people of Myanmar?"

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told delegates his country has already "imposed sanctions on the regime to encourage it to make further progress."

If there was no such progress, he warned, "the United States would call for Security Council sanctions. It was time for the Council to do more than simply listen to a briefing."

Last week, nine of the 10 foreign ministers of ASEAN -- representing Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- expressed "revulsion over reports that the protests (in the streets of Burma) were being suppressed by violence."

Burma was the only ASEAN member to skip that meeting, which took place in the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly sessions in New York.

Ambassador U Kyaw Tint Swe, the permanent representative of Burma to the United Nations, said he was made to understand that Menon's statement was "not on behalf of ASEAN" -- a claim denied by Singapore.

But he stressed that despite the "recent tragic events, the situation in Myanmar is not a threat to either regional or international peace or security."

He expressed his country's deep appreciation to members of the Security Council -- namely Russia and China, whom he did not name -- for taking that position.

"I would therefore like to call on the Security Council to refrain from any action that would be detrimental to the good offices role of the secretary-general mandated by the General Assembly," he added.

The U.N. secretary-general's special adviser on Myanmar, Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari, returned to New York Thursday after a brief visit to the country.

He said his visit was short, but ideally, the next time around he would like "stay as long as possible and meet all the people I want to meet."

Gambari said a return visit -- possibly in mid-November -- should help sustain the momentum and not allow it to slip by. He also told reporters that China and India, along with ASEAN, could be "critically important" in helping resolve the crisis in Burma.

"We are working closely with them," said Gambari, who called for a time-bound and serious dialogue for national reconciliation.

Last week, an unnamed Indian official was quoted as saying: "We are not the only democracy that works with generals," as he made a veiled criticism of the United States, which has been a close ally of General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

India, which has close economic and military ties to Burma, has taken a less critical view of events in that country.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council he was "deeply concerned" about the recent events in Myanmar and the reports of continued human rights violations.

"I must reiterate that the use of force against peaceful demonstrators is abhorrent and unacceptable," he said.

"A united Security Council could play an important role in support of the ongoing efforts of the United Nations," he added.

The Security Council, however, remains divided, with China and Russia, two veto-wielding permanent members, taking the position that the events in Burma do not constitute a threat to international peace and security.

Last week, the Council was also unable to reach consensus on a proposed presidential statement expressing concerns over the killings in Burma because of opposition from China.

The traditional Chinese party line is that the demonstrations and killings in the military-run country were a "domestic" problem warranting no international condemnation or U.N. sanctions.

Yvonne Terlingen, head of Amnesty International's Office at the United Nations, said Friday the Security Council must press for drastic change in "Myanmar's appalling human rights policies and keep the human rights situation under close and constant review as resolving the human rights crisis is key to addressing peace and security and advancing national reconciliation in Myanmar."

"The Council must also ensure that those responsible for human rights violations are held accountable and that the Myanmar authorities deal with the country's longstanding human rights concerns, which have helped fuel the recent crisis," she added.

Last January, both China and Russia exercised their vetoes to block a U.S.-sponsored draft resolution calling for an end to political repression and human rights violations in Burma.

Ambassador Wang Guangya of China argued then -- as he did Friday -- that the problems facing Burma are "basically internal". "No international-imposed solution can help the situation," he told reporters. "We want the government there to handle this issue."

If the United States pushes for sanctions against Burma, China is expected to use its veto once again to protect a neighboring country with which it has strong political, economic and military interests.

A longstanding U.N. observer told IPS that Western oil companies such as Chevron and Total have a major stake in Burma's big gas fields, the financial mainstay of the military junta.

"So, the story is not just about brutal Chinese policy vs enlightened U.S. policy," he said. "The cynical maneuvers in these cases are revolting, as great powers seek their geopolitical interests, never the authentic defence of human rights."

Taking a different perspective, Ian William, who covers the United Nations for several international publications including the London Guardian, says that even though there is no justification for China to use its veto to protect a universally condemned regime, he sees a parallel in the United States using its own veto to protect its ally Israel over the last decades.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Williams told IPS, Washington has been adding annually to its veto total and will soon outrun the former USSR's tally of "Nyets".

China is doing itself no favors in using its vetoes for issues like Sudan and Burma, which are surely peripheral to its national interests, and Beijing seems to be realizing that it is getting close to calls for boycott of next year's Olympics, which would be an additional blow to its prestige.

"But it is understandable that it should want to emulate its number one debtor, the United States which has devalued the veto by using it for resolutions which often actually reflect longstanding U.S. policy on Israel, over settlements, Jerusalem and so on," noted Williams.

Ironically, it is that same support for Israel which has caused the United States to disregard its own innovation, the "Uniting For Peace" procedure by which issues stuck in the Security Council could be taken up by the General Assembly.

Williams said the United States invented it during the Korean War -- but declared it non-binding after Palestine invoked it to bypass "unreasonable" U.S. vetoes in the Council.

"In Kosovo, in Sudan, in Bosnia, the procedure could have been used to save lives, but Washington has effectively disarmed the United Nations in order to protect Israeli -- not U.S. -- interests," added Williams, who also writes for the Nation.

- Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency

Sporting Chances for Burma?

China's Olympic workout

The Beijing Games next year may prove to be China's Achilles heel - if human rights groups can hit it.

Full text of Comment is Free
October 1, 2007 11:00 AM | Printable version

The UN general assembly and the Olympics may not seem that connected, but there are similarities. The latter is an official occasion for global peace and harmony to which almost every country in the world sends its national team to compete ferociously with others and whip up varying degrees of nationalist fervour at home.

Last week's meeting of the general assembly was no different, although we did miss Hugo Chavez's attempt to expand President Bush's reading material beyond the Pet Goat. There was something quite athletic about how different delegations raced up the aisles in the competitive walkout stakes to make sure that a row of empty seats greeted whoever the demon of the day was as he took the rostrum. The sprint was definitely the race that the original Olympians, the Greeks, won to protest the omission of (Former Yugoslav Republic of) from Macedonia's title.

The Cuban foreign minister's articulate and, sad to say, factually based (if somewhat one-sided) verbal assault on Bush, in reply to the latter's attack on Castro, played a nice counterpart to the orotundly obscure style of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact the puzzled expressions of the Iranian and American presidents almost had me thinking they were competing for the Mad Magazine Alfred E Neuman "What, Me Worry?" gold medal. (Bush wins on quotes.)

But the Iranian did actually put himself forward for the press - as long as they were not from the Israeli team. Bush may be somewhat challenged, but he knows his limitations enough to avoid unchoreographed and unscripted press conferences.

It may have been my early years as a conductor on football trains, but I've always been very dubious of the idea that sport and peace go hand in hand. Even apart from the personal experience of trying to fend off scores of rabid fans after someone's blood, sport's track record of promoting harmony does not impress. It is not just the fans - think of the football war of 1969. The Olympics has not been much better.

Indeed totalitarianism and the track seem much more closely related. From Hitler in 1936 - and it would have been held in Tokyo in 1940 if throwing javelins had not been overshadowed by firing shells - right on to Beijing, tough regimes love sport. Just look at the gymnastic splendour of a Kim Jong Il birthday party, the inhumane training regime of the East Germans.

At least one thing that can be said about the major American sports, baseball and the American version of football, is that since few other countries play them at a serious level, they are not really the occasions for xenophobic competitiveness on a grand scale. It seems like archetypal American isolationism that they have a baseball World Series just for themselves.

But the Beijing Olympics offers a genuine opportunity for peace. The Chinese are so concerned about urination on their 2008 parade that human rights organisations and governments that support human rights (and even those like Bush's that pretend to do so) have a rare but serious opportunity to get the Chinese onside. The Taiwanese know this - that's why they are staging their referendum on UN membership early in the New Year - not long before the Olympics.

From Darfur to Rangoon, there are definite signals that roguish states that have benefited from Chinese diplomatic protection are feeling a little chilly. The more calls there are for boycotts, the less likely Beijing is to go out on a limb for its mass murdering friends.

Human rights supporters should keep talking boycotts, and they may even put some truth in the rumours of a responsibility to protect that the UN general assembly voted for in 2005, with none against. China seems to have forgotten that principle - that mass murders by governments are a threat to international peace and security that demand United Nations action.

Catch a cadre by the toe: Olympic opportunities for dealing with China

Olympic possibilities for Burma? in Comment is Free

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

Iran, Nixon, Bush, and terminal idiocy

Tribune Column 21 September

Richard Nixon famously had the "Madman Strategy" to intimidate his enemies. But it was not really a strategy, it was more of a tactic. It is George W. Bush who has elevated lunacy or at least idiocy, to a strategy. And what is more, it appears the ailment is contagious, possibly even epidemic.

Of course it makes no sense to attack Iran… but all the signs are that that is what the White House coterie is up to. The rhetoric from all the usual suspects is uncannily similar to what we heard the run up to the Iraq invasion – along with the detachment from reality of the deluded proponents.

Just consider General Petraeus's evidence to Congress last week. He is a political general, appointed by Bush to tell the legislators what the White House wanted to hear. And he did. The legislators and the press, hypnotized by the uniform, took what he said as gospel; although some of the bolder souls did indeed point out that he has consistently seen silver linings in the clouds over Baghdad.

Petraeus's delivery elided Al-Qaeda, insurgents, Iran and the Shi'a militias as if they were a seamless whole, implying that Teheran is behind the deaths of Americans in Iraq, and by a few degrees of separation, sponsoring Osama Bin Laden.

Let us consider Iran. It is indeed governed by faith-based zealots who are enthusiastic practitioners of the death penalty. But unlike the US it has not invaded any of its neighbouring countries.

Indeed, Saddam Hussein, with American and British support invaded Iran and fought one of the longest and most bloody wars of aggression of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Ahmedinejad is, to put it kindly, not the brightest star in the diplomatic firmament, but on examination, a lot of what his detractors accuse him of saying is the subject of willful mistranslation, and he has consistently denied military nuclear ambitions.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty binds Iran. – unlike nuclear powers Indian and Pakistan, the former of which has been given the green light by the US in defiance of the treaty while the latter has military and security officers who have a proven record of favoring the Taliban. It is legitimate to ask why on earth an oil–rich country like Iran should embark on a perilous road to nuclear energy, but one could answer that the reasons may be similar to those which impelled a coal and oil rich country like Great Britain to be actively considering expansion of nuclear reactor capability.

But who do you trust on these issues? Nobel prize-winner Mohammed El Baradei of the IAEA, who was completely vindicated about Iraq's lack of a nuclear programme, or the recidivist liars and fabulists who hymned our way into the disastrous invasion?

As El Baradei said in Vienna this week, "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."

He thinks he has pulled off a deal, but it is hardly surprising that the murderous clots who brought us the Iraq debacle are again attacking him furiously. Of course, they might be right, and Iran may indeed have nuclear ambitions. But the burden of proof really has to meet an even higher standard than normal because of their own proven predilection for telling political expedient whoppers.

Of course, some of the biggest proponents of an attack on Iran come from Israel. Israel has invaded its neighbour Lebanon over and over again, using modern weaponry supplied by the United States. It has nuclear weapons. It recently flew a provocative sortie into Syria, possibly alienating Turkey in the process. It is occupying parts of Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. So do we really take their word for it that Iran needs dealing with?

Luckily, there are some signs of inoculation against this pervasive insanity. It appears that British officers are demurring at being moved to the Iranian border in order to act as a trip wire if the Revolutionary Guards come swarming over the Iraqi border in retaliation for whatever the Israelis or Americans have done. But they hardly need to.

The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq handed over control of large swathes of the country to Shi'a groups and militia who, if you believe Petraeus, take orders from their coreligionists in Teheran. Even taking his conspiracist scripts with a hint of skepticism, one can assume that the Shi'a in Iraq will not take kindly to an attack on Iran whether by the US, or by Israel with tacit US backing.

There is no way that Israel would attack Iran in the teeth of US displeasure, and of course any Iranian retaliation would then trigger American support. I suppose it would then mean that US troops would be out of Iraq, dead or alive, but with the parlous state of the world economy, all it needs is Gulf Oil to be out of the markets to cause the mother of all crashes.

But surely the Democrats in Congress would oppose an attack? Don't bet on it. Mesmerized by talk of terrorism and attacks on GI's, whipped in by AIPAC, the Israel Lobby, most of the presidential contenders are sleepwalking to disaster- assisted it might be added by inept diplomacy. It's no way to run a world.

UNcle Sam the UN deadbeat

My latest in the Guardian comment-is-free on the US arrears to the UN.

What Wall? What Occupation?

Here's the full text of my Guardian comment on Western Sahara...
For which I was attacked, (as always) on Serbia and Kosovo.

What wall? What occupation?

It's time to stop Morocco's prevarication over Western Sahara.
Ian Williams

April 13, 2007 4:00 PM | Printable version

It's not double standards, it's no standards at all. The world has let scoff-law Morocco ride roughshod over international law and the UN Charter. It helps to have friends!

Their territory split by a huge wall built at enormous expense, an occupied Arab population suffers under police raids and arbitrary imprisonment while the occupiers try to swamp the territories with settlers from their own population. In response, the locals are beginning an intifada, but face a much larger, better-equipped military force, the beneficiary of substantial overseas aid. Refugees living in camps are refused the right to return to their homes.

Despite clear decisions of the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council, the occupiers hedge whenever it comes down to the question of a peace settlement that grants independence even when American emissaries try to nudge them towards serious talks.

Welcome to Western Sahara, the occupation that admittedly has lasted only three decades compared with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but which has excited much less media interest.

This week, the issue came back to what passes for the fore in this forgotten conflict, when the Polisario, on behalf of the Sahwaris and the Kingdom of Morocco both submitted their plans for the resolution of the problem.

The Moroccan one is superficially attractive after all these decades, offering Scottish-style devolution. But their track record on keeping promises is far from stellar. Over 15 years ago, Morocco accepted a peace deal that involved the referendum on self-determination. The cash-strapped UN has spent hundreds of millions on keeping a force there to monitor the cease-fire and arrange a vote. But as soon as it became clear that Morocco would lose any vote that involved independence, the king and his father before him, gave prevarication a bad name. They tried to stack the voters' rolls, and when that failed, simply refused to allow a vote that asked the question.

Morocco's human rights record leaves much to be desired, as indeed did Polisario's in the old days. But the Moroccan reticence about allowing a vote is eloquent testimony to the government's assessment of the popular mood.

What is the secret of Morocco's success? In essence, it is choosing friends carefully.

Morocco claims Arab solidarity - and is one of the best friends of Israel in the Arab World. Immediately after the Moroccans occupied the territory despite the ICJ ruling that rubbished its territorial claims, the UN security council passed resolutions 379 and 380, which explicitly and unconditionally called on Morocco to withdraw. However, the French and Americans blocked the enforcing of these resolutions. According to then-US ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."

While the US's anti-communist fervour has died down - with communism - France has remained an important and unprincipled supporter of the king. Despite all that Cartesian rhetoric with which it opposed the invasion of Iraq, over the Sahara it has a novel and disturbing principle: the security council cannot impose its decisions on parties if they disagree.

France has claimed there was a tradition of using consensus on Western Sahara, which was a bit like the apocryphal prisoner who had killed his parents and then asked for the court's sympathy because he was an orphan. Any such "tradition" developed in response to constant French and American attempts to railroad a pro-Moroccan position past the other security council members in defiance of all previous decisions.

Britain's attitude seems to be that it does not have a dog in the fight, so it is prepared to go along with the Americans and the French. But the standing of international law, the UN charter and principles are surely a dog worth backing in any foreign policy with - in Robin Cook's words - "an ethical dimension". In the end, the illegal Indonesia occupation of East Timor succumbed to the persistent refusal of the world to recognise it.

Polisario has made a very reasonable offer, which is in complete accordance with UN resolutions and international law. It could also offer, instead of a Scottish style solution with the Moroccan army and secret police still in occupation - a Canadian style solution. We will put King Mohammed on our coins and welcome an occasional royal visit - but nothing more.

But in any case, the UK, the EU, and the UN, should stop accommodating Morocco and France and step up the pressure on Rabat. It's the law.

The Run from Iraq to Iran

Latest Comment is Free on the Road to Iran, which leads through Iraq!

Bush in a China Shop

Here is my comparative reading in the Guardian's Comment is Free of the US State Department Annual Human Rights report, and the Chinese counter-report.

Feel free to join in!

Special Relationship - Dead as a Parrot.

A special relationship?

Not exactly. Britain has always been the battered mistress: badly treated but clinging to the US for protection.
Ian Williams

Latest on Guardian "Comment is Free"
A Special Relationship
February 11, 2007 3:00 PM |

My father's old chums always used to reminisce about trigger-happy Yankee pilots during the second world war. But the Pentagon's denial that it had tapes of the killing of British Corporal Matty Hull by American pilots in Iraq highlights the change in the alleged "special relationship", over the last seven decades.

The special relationship was indeed special and one-sided from the beginning, putting Britain in the role of the battered mistress: frequently screwed and badly treated, but clinging to the protection of the stronger USA. But no matter how humiliating, it could be argued that Britain used to benefit from it. No longer.

There was a rare moment of candour last year by a US State Department official, Kendall Myers. "There never really has been a special relationship or at least not one we've noticed," he said and added: "We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, 'There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let's park them'. It is a sad business and I don't think it does them justice."

He concluded "I can't think of anything [Blair] got on the asset side of the ledger," out of the Iraq War.

In the second world war even my old man's aggrieved veteran friends were glad the Americans were there, "blue on blue" notwithstanding. It was a war that Britain had worked very hard to drag the US into - and not just for selfish reasons. Knowing that Britain only had the resources to fight the war on its own until 1943, the cabinet in 1940 decided not to cut to a deal with Hitler, which could have left the economy and empire intact, and instead fought on, even though it meant effectively selling the country to the USA. Washington took full advantage of the fire sale.

Even at the height of the struggle against Hitler, once Canadian and American troops began to arrive in Britain, the US Treasury unilaterally cut off lend-lease whenever their spending brought Britain's dollar reserves above $300m.

Britain handed over to the US all its technology, from penicillin and radar to its nuclear bomb research. Washington rewarded it in 1946 with the McMahon Act, which stopped British access to the joint research product of the Manhattan project, and a sudden stop on lend-lease terms as soon as the war was over.

But Britain was in no position to argue. After the war, the Labour government, stiffed several times by the US Treasury, was under no illusions - but now faced the prospect of the Red Army taking over Europe. There was no way a bankrupt Britain could head off the threat on its own.

The Labour foreign minister, Ernest Bevin, invented NATO to "keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in". But he was under no illusions about American altruism, which is why the British Labour government decided to build its own nuclear bomb. As Bevin put it: "We've got to have it and it's got to have a bloody Union Jack on it."

During the Berlin airlift, Britain accepted US bases, with nuclear weapons. Churchill condemned the Labour party for selling out British sovereignty, but did nothing to expel them when he resumed office in 1951.

The later Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan accepted an even more explicitly subsidiary role, in an avuncular sort of way, with Jack Kennedy. In an inadvertently appropriate analogy, he saw Britain as Athens to America's Rome, providing wisdom and culture to the stronger military power. Of course, in the real world, Rome conquered Athens and those wise Athenian cultural teachers in Rome were often slaves.

Successive British governments managed to maintain some minimal dignity under the circumstances. For example, despite Lyndon Johnson's arm-twisting, Labour prime minister Harold Wilson managed to ensure that there was no British involvement whatsoever in Vietnam. Even Margaret Thatcher managed to oppose the US's uncritical support of Israel - whether to maintain profitable arms trade with Saudi Arabia or out of concern for the Palestinians.

Until recently, Britain's diplomatic specialty was to bridge the gap between a unilateralist USA and the rest of the world. It also has to be said they did a pretty good job of it, no matter how distasteful most of the time. Like cleaning sewers, someone has to do it.

Being a loyal ally did indeed give them an occasional hand on the steering wheel, as Tony Blair said. But what Blair thought was the steering wheel in a car was usually just the whistle on a runaway locomotive. All he could do was warn that the train was rattling down the tracks and would not stop until it hit Iraq. Subservience without self-interest is now the rule. For example, Britain now regularly abstains at the UN rather than defy Washington on Middle Eastern issues. London will extradite British citizens to the US without a hearing in their own country - but not vice versa.

The gains to the US are clear. It gets a difficult-to-sink aircraft carrier moored off Europe, and a significant diplomatic and military ally to save it from the total isolation that its policies would so often have otherwise condemned it to. And it comes without sending aid or covering for maverick military adventures, as it does with Israel.

A former British foreign secretary once explained to journalists that British policy was the same as it was in the time of Pitt the younger: "To ensure that no combination of powers arises in Europe that can threaten Britain."

That policy has sunk with the wooden battleships of the era. Britain should stop acting as Washington's Trojan Horse in Europe, and join in building a multilateral Europe rather than providing latter-day sepoys for the American empire.