Last week the North Korean government (officially, the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, a misuse of the word “democratic” if ever there was one), threatened a massive nuclear strike if the United States and South Korea carried out their annual “war games” in international waters.  This set of war games is being conducted to demonstrate that both South Korea and the U.S. maintain considerable, well-coordinated military strength in the region, and that the action of North Korea, in sinking a South Korean ship, the Cheonan, was intolerable and that it would not be permitted to pass unnoticed.

This somewhat more muscular response follows another feckless resolution from the United Nations, which condemned the attack on the ship but not the attacker.  Why the fear of offending this bankrupt nation that cannot feed its own people, all of whom live in a virtual prison camp?  The answer is obvious; – it is estimated that North Korea has a nuclear arsenal of up to 10 nuclear bombs They also have a missile delivery system, and so the world must wait with bated breath to see what the stroke-ridden dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, known to his people as Dear Leader, will do in response to the war games.

We bring up North Korea to emphasize the outsize influence a rogue state can have if it possesses nuclear weapon capability.  The immediate relevance relates to Iran’s nuclear program on which there appears to be a consensus that weapons grade plutonium is being developed, and that a bomb will be manufactured shortly thereafter.  Whether the world is months or years away from Iran’s demonstration of its nuclear capability, we do not know.  Recently, CIA Director, Leon E. Panetta, stated that Iran already has material for two atomic bombs.  As we know, one nuclear bomb going off could spoil your whole day.

President Obama has spent a little more than a year reaching out to the Iranian regime to no avail.  No serious negotiations commenced.  Although the Iranians deny that their nuclear program is for other than peaceful uses, it will not permit international inspectors to verify that claim.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in a report this spring on Iran’s nuclear program, suggested that Tehran has produced 2400 kilograms of low enriched uranium, which is apparently enough to build two atomic weapons after the material is further enriched.  Iran has made clear its intention to further enrich its uranium, and, tellingly, has agreed to ship, for storage, only 1200 kilograms (or half) of its stockpile to Brazil and Turkey under the much heralded fig-leaf pact it entered into with those two nations last May.   Accordingly, the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States recently imposed further economic sanctions on Iran in hopes that this set of sanctions will convince the Iranians to abandon their nuclear efforts.  We think that is very unlikely.

(more…)

Saturday’s New York Times reported the leak of a secret January memo from Defense Secretary Gates to “top White House officials” warning that “the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability…”

The article quoted an unnamed senior official who called the memo “…a wake-up call.”  But the day after the initial report, Gates told the Times, “The memo was not intended as a ‘wake-up call’ or received as such by the president’s national security team.” He added, “Rather, it presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision-making process.”

Was it that, or something else? All evidence leads to the latter.

This is an example of one Washington game played by “senior administration officials” from time beyond memory.  The clues to who and why are not well-hidden.

Who leaked Gates’s memo?

The first Times article differentiates the anonymous “senior official” who described the memo from White House officials who “disputed” his view.  That means the most probable leaker was Gates himself or someone on Gates’s staff acting with his knowledge.

Obama’s National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones, chafed at the Gates memo.  The first NYT article quoted him as saying, “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t’ mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies – we do.”

But that’s no answer.  Gates said Obama’s policy was inadequate, not that he didn’t have one.  But the fact that Gates so quickly downplayed the meaning of the memo indicates two things. First, that he doesn’t view the Iran policy disagreement to be a serious dispute with Obama, at least yet.  Second, that he stands by the memo in a clear vote of no confidence in Obama’s closest advisors.

(more…)

Short answer: no… but then again, we seriously doubt that we’re in any greater danger either.  The new policy is both revocable and subject to review and modification if circumstances so warrant.  The questions we want to explore are the rationale for announcing a new policy in the first place and whether the recent summit of 47 nations to deal with nuclear risks accomplished any positive good.

The argument which is made by the right against the president’s newly announced policy, namely that enemy nations that are in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPR) can attack us with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction with complete impunity from nuclear retaliation seems a bit hysterical. One way or another, any nation that attacks us with biological or chemical weapons should count on a rendezvous with their stone-age ancestors.   On the other hand, the argument from the left, that we have moved the hands of the doomsday clock back several minutes, seems like wishful thinking.  America and the world is not safer… not yet, anyway.

Some of those who have been the biggest critics of our Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies, and whose main motivation in life seems to be to prove George Bush’s policies were wrong contend that Iran or North Korea may, as a result of the new policy, be incentivized to abandon their plans to build nuclear arsenals and now comply with the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.  This seems more the stuff of Saturday Night Live than serious foreign-policy thinking.

We do not expect that the President will ever answer the phone in the oval office to,.. “Hello, Barack, this is Mahmoud Admadinejad.  Sorry I haven’t responded earlier to your outstretched hand, but your new nuclear policy made me realize that I owe you an apology.”  Or “Hi there Mr. President, Kim Jong-Il calling to let you know that your new policy is so impressive that I, today, personally ordered the dismantling of all our nuclear forces.”

(more…)

Here we go again.  President Obama bowed to the Chinese President and the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao, when they met in Washington yesterday.  This latest bow comes after a string of previously humiliating and ridiculous Bama bows: to the Saudi king, the Japanese emperor, and (my favorite) the Mayor of Tampa, Florida.

After all of this deferential bowing, the Saudis are still supporting and exporting Islamic terrorism and radicalism and the Japanese are still in our face about our military bases there.  I’m pretty sure Tampa must still have some sort of beef with Washington.  But the point is that no matter how much groveling the Bama does, the result is the same: total contempt from those
he’s trying desperately to charm with his “humility.”

The latest example is Hu, who looked completely baffled and slightly amused at the sight of the President of the United States and supposed champion of freedom, bowing before him.  Of course, he read it as American weakness (as he and everyone else in the world had read the Bama’s previous bows).  The result?  Earlier yesterday, Team Obama rushed to the media to trumpet a
breakthrough of sorts with the Chinese over sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program.  Jeff Bader, a top Obama national security official, proclaimed, ”They are prepared to work with us.”

Not so fast.

(more…)

On the foreign policy front, the Democrats for years have blamed America for the actions of rogue nations and dictators.  Indeed, as Mona Charen pointed out at length, in her book Useful Idiots, the Democrats have been all too willing to Blame America First for the actions of others.  So the storyline goes, when Russia armed itself, it was a justified response to the American arms buildup – as if Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were otherwise peace loving souls.

No mere academic cheer for Democrats, they have campaigned on their Blame America First theme for years.  In the minds of those Democrats, rather than display arrogance, America must be more humble, except blame for World troubles and not seek to impose its view on the world.  The latest iteration of that, of course, was Obama’s campaign.

According to Obama, following 9/11:

Millions around the world were ready to stand with us. They were willing to rally to our cause because it was their cause too – because they knew that if America led the world toward a new era of global cooperation, it would advance the security of people in our nation and all nations.” According to Obama, however, the Bush Administration “squandered that opportunity . . . [and]  . . . World opinion has turned against us.

What is the cure for such “mistakes,” according to Obama? As we have seen, it is to apologize on his world tours for American actions, to promise to talk directly to dictators, to abandon missile systems, to speak softly in the face of phony Iranian elections and crack downs on dissent, to bow in front of dictators, wear a thin mustache in front Middle Eastern leaders in Egypt, preach global responsibility, promise to close Guantanamo, give rights to Interpol over US territory, and on and on.

(more…)