Category: Foreign Relations

Incompetent Condi Rice STILL Can’t Manage Her Way Out of a Paper Bag — DPRK Edition

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Well, it appears, that once again Rice is more concerned with being a close confidant to the president than doing her job, and as a result, conflicts between the negotiators and the John Bolton clones in the arms control wing of the State Department have sabotaged the agreement on North Korean nuclear weapons.

Under the proposal, heavily influenced by the State Department’s arms control experts, the U.S. requested “full access to all materials” at sites that might have had a nuclear purpose in the past. It sought “full access to any site, facility or location” deemed relevant to the nuclear program, including military facilities, according to the four-page document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. Investigators would be able to take photographs and make videos, remain on site as long as necessary, make repeated visits and collect and remove samples.

It’s essentially what they insisted on Iraq, only the Iraqis had already lost a war, and signed an agreement ceding much sovereignty in that area.

What’s more, we know who was pushing for a breakdown in the agreement:

“I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days,” Bush announced June 26. “The next 45 days will be an important period for North Korea to show its seriousness of its cooperation. We will work through the six-party talks to develop a comprehensive and rigorous verification protocol. And during this period, the United States will carefully observe North Korea’s actions — and act accordingly.”

But there was no written document linking North Korea’s performance on verification to its removal from the terror list, sources said. So when Bush let the 45 days pass without any action, North Korea denounced what it called “obviously a violation of the principle of ‘action for action’ essential for realizing denuclearization.”

The Bush administration does not want a deal. They see it as weakness, and besides, California and Hawaii, the likely targets of a missile attack, don’t vote Republican.

Clueless on the DPRK

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It’s amazing how bloody clueless both Bush and His Evil Minions™ and the press covering this don’t get it, as typified by the hed, “U.S. Bewildered Over N. Korea Nuclear Defiance.”

It’s very simple. While the folks in North Korea are not particularly trustworthy, there has been a consistent pattern where they have taken steps they have agreed to, and the US has refused to make the steps that it has agreed to.

You could pull the DPRK off the list of “terrorist sponsoring states” in 15 minutes, and you could put them back in 15 minutes, but the brainless trust headed by Cheney and Rice won’t do anything ever, because keeping our side of the bargain is to their minds capitulation.

The North Koreans are restarting their Yongbyon nuclear power plant because they have absolutely no faith in the word of the United States to keep the deal.

Foreign Relations Committee Tells Condi to Go Cheney Herself

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Condoleeza Rice has negotiated agreements with the UK and Australia to allow for smoother transfers of defense technologies between the nations, as ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) can be a rather ponderous apparatus.

After repeated delays in the State Department supplying information regarding the impact of these treaties on existing statute, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has decided to defer consideration of the compacts until after Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are out of office.

Payback is a bitch, bitch.

DPRK Testing New Missile Engine

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It appears that they are in response to the US refusing to take them off the terrorist list, as was previously agreed to.

Seriously, taking them off the list is just a stroke of a pen, and can be reinstated with a stroke of a pen, but Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are so busy swinging their dicks that they are convincing the North Koreans that this is all some sort of ploy to destroy them.

Fracking with paranoids for giggles when they have missiles and nukes is stupid, but for Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

Your Regular Georgia Update

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There are rumblings in the Council of Europe about ejecting both Russia and Georgia, which just goes to show what memberships in the Council of Europe are actually worth, seeing as how this was shortly followed by Russia signing treaties with South Ossetia and Abkhazia guaranteeing protection in the event of an attack.

Still Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, has declared that Russia cannot block Georgiaan membership in NATO, which implies that Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has not read the NATO charter, which states that there can be no extant border disputes for a nation to be brought into NATO.

The only way for Georgia to get into NATO at this point would be to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and somehow come to a consensus on what the borders were.

Bad Foreign Policy Analysis

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So now Bloomberg is suggesting that western flight from the Russian markets may drive russia to moderate its position on Georgia.

This is bovine scatology….the people who will flee are the foreign investment banks, and the people who will snap up stuff at depressed prices are Putin supporters, and they will make more money when the money reenters the Russian market, and the net result will be a movement of ownership from transnational corporations to Putin and his cronies.

This is a feature, not a bug.

The Black Sea Follies

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Not surprisingly, we have Cheney visiting the region before slinking off to an undisclosed location, and he is very clear on the fact that he wants a new cold war for political advantage, NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine, and pretty much anyone else, if only because it pisses off the Russians. (see here, here, and here)

Of course, the Ukraine’s coalition government appears to be on the verge of collapse, and while Ukrainian President Yushchenko is still going for NATO membership, while PM Yulia Tymoshenko* is more cautious, and less viscerally anti-Russian (and anti-ethnic Russians in the Ukraine) than the president.

It also appears that while the Ukranians are interested in EU membership, support NATO membership is somewhat more tepid.

Even with that, there is no unanimity within the EU over Ukraine’s membership.

I’m not sure if this is because of concerns with Russia, because the Ukraine is really not ready in terms of things like transparency, or because the EU is already suffering from massive growing pains and transfer payments from it’s breakneck expansion of the past few years.

Meanwhile, NATO appears to be taking a leading role in the rebuilding of the Georgian military, with NATO networking with NATO radars and their early warning system.

Meanwhile, we have a pretty good rundown of Georgian misstatements and flat out lies about the war, and that Georgia had been planning its invasion of South Ossetia for many months, as evidenced by this story from April regarding the radars being moved into the conflict areas.

What is clear is that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was hoping to draw NATO into his war, which is a pretty good reason not to even begin considering EU or NATO membership for Georgia until it is clear that the firebrand politician has left the stage; he was engaging in nuclear chicken by proxy.

In any case it appears that the Russians are deescalating, with a promise to withdraw all troops from Georgia proper.

*Why, oh why can’t news happen in places where the names are easy to spell?

Why My Posting has Been Light Lately

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Things are fracked up busy.

  • Desperately trying to learn the ins and outs of feeds, and how to get Google ads on them.
  • Switching from lots of links to Google RSS reader.
  • Lost my job.
  • Dropped my cell phone in the toilet, needed to chase down a replacement.
  • Still working on my 1987 taxes (big refund coming, I am a bloody idiot).
  • Trying to get in some Torah study in while I have the chance.
  • Trying to resuscitate a Minyan in the area.

Still, you learn something new every day. I’m about 8 bucks from my first Adsense check, and according to the Maryland DOL, I have to declare it when I file for unemployment.

NATO Conducts Raid Inside Pakistan

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Way to piss off an essential ally against terrorism in the region, by sending in a helicopter based infantry assault, and killing some number of civilians.

I’m not sure if this is the start of a new policy, a statement of displeasure regarding Pakistan’s Ramadan cease fire, or some attempt to gin up something for the us elections, but in either case, the consequences, in terms of destabilizing a nuclear armed Pakistan, are very concerning.

Note that this was not the NATO force that did this, as, “American troops in Afghanistan operate under a NATO chain of command, the Special Operations forces who carried out this attack answer only to American commanders.”

In any case, this does not bode well for US-Pakistani relations.

As the Caucuses Turns

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Unsurprisingly, we have reports that Cheney to made promises to support Georgia while there.

Once again, Mr. Deferment is letting his mouth cut checks that someone else’s kids will have to cash.

No doubt he promised more welfare for American defense contractors to help rebuild their military, which the Georgians are reportedly very eager to do.

Additionally, it appears that once again, Cheney is determined to make another problem worse, as he is lobbying for the US terminating the civil nuclear cooperation pact with Russia, which is likely to mean more ill-secured nuclear material in that nation.

This isn’t to say that Russian diplomatic efforts are going well. They just got the kiss of death diplomatically, when Hugo Chavez of Venezuela backed the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Also, in the, “I thought that this has already happened,” category, we have Georgia severing diplomatic ties with Russia.

I think that the final word on this conflict comes from William Pfaff:

Ukraine and the Baltic states have been given the lesson that great powers do not go to war against other heavily armed great powers just to settle ancient sectarian quarrels or linguistic rivalries in client countries, even if those are prospective NATO members.

Meanwhile, Saakashvili is beginning to see domestic push-back from his failed adventure, with the opposition now saying that some of the blame lays in the, “US educated Georgian leader,” for the spanking received from the Russians.

Meanwhile, the EU has been unable to come to a consensus on any diplomatic actions to take, which is an indication that the EU does need a change in governance structure, just not the one that they are trying to ram down the throat of the Irish.

Russia remains completely unapologetic about the whole affair, which is not surprising, as over the top as some of the statements made by Moscow on the conflict are, it’s clear that this is a real statement of how Russia feels about both Georgia and NATO expansion.

While I am not as big a fan of delving into the minutiae of military conflicts analysis as, for example, the War Nerd, Aviation Week does have an interesting report on Russian self-analysis on what happened in Georgia. (paid subscription required)

Not surprisingly, the RuAF comes in for most of the criticism. There was apparently little preparation on their point, and no attempts to use long range PGWs to take out Georgian air defense systems.