Foreign Policy In Focus

The primary U.S. thermonuclear weapon is designated B61. When we hear the modifier thermonuclear, aka H-bomb, we think end of the world.  But this bomb, delivered by bombers and fighters, as opposed to missiles, can function as either an intermediate "strategic" -- blow up a specific part of the world -- or "tactical" -- just the battlefield -- nuclear weapon.

The B61 is what's known as a variable-yield bomb. First, it's not one weapon per se, but a category of weapons based on one design. Second, some of the B61s come equipped with a dial. Bet you didn't know that the destructive force of a nuclear bomb could be adjusted like an appliance. 

The six settings range from A to F. Wonder what those stand for. How about: A for anti-personnel, B for bad news, C for cataclysmic, D for death and destruction, E for end of life on earth as we know it, and F for fail as in epic?

The executive director of the Project for Government Oversight (POGO), Danielle Brian, has just written a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta pointing out that, in fact, it's U.S. taxpayers who are "bearing the increasing life extension costs of the approximately 200 B61 nuclear bombs deployed and stored in Europe."

The issue of whether or not one objects to nuclear weapons on principle aside for the moment, POGO questions the military value, the security, and the cost of the umbrella deterrence which we extend to Europe.

The effectiveness first: "The situation at the U.S. base in Incirlik, Turkey, is particularly problematic: Most of the" approximately 50 bombs "are for delivery by US aircraft," but requests to deploy a U.S. Air Force "wing there have been turned down by Turkey. … In a crisis, US aircraft from other bases would have to first deploy to Incirlik to pick up the weapons before they could be used. … Turkey’s F-16s … are not currently certified to carry out the mission of delivering nuclear weapons … In another example, Germany plans for its replacement fighter aircraft not to be nuclear capable. This could influence other countries to do the same—leaving the United States in a position where U.S." aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons would need to fly in from elsewhere.

Second, the security:

A 2008 report by a U.S. Air Force Blue Ribbon Review states that security at the host-nation locations is varied and often does not meet U.S. nuclear weapons protection standards. Physical facilities such as structures, fences, lights, and alarm systems are not well maintained. In addition, host-nation military personnel charged with the security mission are sometimes conscripts [with] almost no specialized training [whose] reliability is questionable due to deficiencies in host-nation screening processes.

Third, the cost: 

POGO has learned from government sources that, since POGO first raised the issue,  the total cost estimate for extending the life (called a life extension program, or LEP) of B61s has grown from approximately $4 billion to $5.2 billion. The cost for the B61s deployed in Europe alone has grown from approximately $1.6 billion to approximately $2.1 billion.

Ms. Brian concludes:

If U.S. and European leaders really believe these nuclear weapons can be useful as a deterrent or that they remain essential to maintaining the political ties that bind the Alliance, the European members must agree to bear an increased share of the costs for these weapons. The U.S. should not be responsible for continuing to pay the majority of the cost to maintain a nuclear weapons capability in European countries, particularly given our nation’s financial constraints.

Washington and the military tend to be impervious to existential questions about nuclear weapons and their morality. Demonstrating their exorbitant costs and their lack of usefulness* in specific situations is, arguably, the best technique for effecting arms control and disarmament.

*As Ward Wilson of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies has often eloquently argued, especially in his Nonproliferation Review article The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence. 

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

A UN Security Council resolution draft came into the hands of The Guardian yesterday, condemning the ongoing violence in Syria and calling for Assad’s regime to take all necessary steps to effect a cease-fire and pursue power-sharing arrangements with opposition groups within 15 days of the resolution’s passage.

So where will the international community go from here if, as in Libya, the leading opposition movement comes out firmly in favor of foreign intervention to establish, at the very least, a no-fly zone over northern Syria to establish a base area for refugees and anti-Assad fighters?

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- co-sponsor alongside the US of the "Arab Counterrevolution" in Bahrain -- is reportedly now pressing the US to take advantage of Syria's disorder to deal a death blow to Iran's Levantine pretensions. Qatar has been the most vocal in calling for Assad to step down, but Saudi Arabia is also making a lot of noise. The Syrian National Council even claims that the Saudis will be next to recognize them as Syria's legitimate government (the Saudis have not commented on this claim).

As the Financial Times notes, this would be a gamble for the Saudis. Opportunism over Syria could worsen tensions in the Persian Gulf. In trying to undermine Iran in Syria, Riyadh could end up helping to drive Tehran into a corner. As hostile as the Saudis have been towards Iran since the 1979 Revolution, they would prefer regime change in Tehran arrive without drawing the Kingdom into an international conflict.

Right now, Russia, with its UN Security Council veto, is the biggest obstacle to UN action on Syria. Given the way that Moscow and its former Caucasian republics have lurched from one separatist crisis to another since 1991, the Russian government is adamantly opposed to backing movements that would wrest Syria from its current orbit, either on humanitarian or strategic grounds. Russia's interests in Syria are dominated by the country's strategic location (bordering Iraq, Israel and NATO-member Turkey), the Tartus naval base, multibillion dollar natural gas investments, and arms sales.

Russia is now trying to mediate a compromise between Assad and opposition forces, though a spokesman from the SNC says his organization will not join in them. It was unlikely that they would, since the Russian Foreign Ministry has just stopped short of calling the SNC a pro-Western puppet government-in-waiting, and the SNC does not regard Russia as an "honest broker” (with good reason, of course).

The EU, or, specifically, the UK and France, seek to maintain their relevance as Mediterranean powers. Under Sarkozy, France has (when convenient) taken a more active human rights position among "Club Med" members. Libya provided the EU with an excellent opportunity to do just this, and while there is much heated debate going on in the European press on whether or not NATO (or the UN) should intervene directly, it is unlikely that they would pass on the opportunity to take action, not least because of their NATO security commitments. Notably, several anti-Assad groups, such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Barada TV are based in London, and the biggest SNC boosters of all have been the British neocons of the Henry Jackson Society. For now, though, Paris and London are hedging their bets: Reuters reports that British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the resolution “does not call for military action and could not be used to authorize it,” and that “French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe described the idea of such intervention as a myth.”

“Myth,” Juppe says, but his office has been meeting with SNC members. And barely three weeks after NATO’s Secretary General said that “I would like to stress that NATO has no plans to intervene and we have not received any request," the armed forces of the US, UK and France were striking Libyan targets and enforcing a naval blockade, having quickly moved from calls for sending a “mission of enquiry” to the country to knocking out Qadhafi’s forces laying siege to Benghazi.

China is not as deeply committed to Syria and Russia is, but like Russia is disposed to balk at intervention on humanitarian grounds and concerned over how Assad's collapse would affect its ally, Iran. China, alongside Russia, vetoed a Security Council resolution last October on Syria. The main obstacle at this stage for the UN to pursue diplomatic efforts, though, is Russia, not China.

No military commitment has even been broached by a US official yet. The Obama Administration has made it clear that it wants Assad gone, and has convened a semi-secret policy group to discuss further steps that can be taken against his regime, though for now it appears this group is discussing sanctions, not special ops insertion. Going into the UN, Hilary Clinton said that “I know that some members here may be concerned that the Security Council is headed toward another Libya. … That is a false analogy. ”

But barring a palace coup among Assad’s security establishment, foreign military action would probably be necessary to tip the scales in the opposition’s favor at this stage. Unless convinced that by ousting Assad, they could retain overall control over the government by brokering an agreement with some members of the opposition, his Alawite coreligionists and family members would have little reason to surrender or defect unless faced with overwhelming military might -- which the “Free Syrian Army” cannot muster -- that would nullify their numerical and qualitative advantages. Absent a rain of ruin from the air, Assad merely has to call the West’s bluff and try to do as his late father and exiled uncle did between 1976 and 1982 against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even with his army and air force’s advantages, though, the situation would be different than it was back then. The “Free Syrian Army” -- which is no army, according to Nir Rosen, but rather an inaccurate catch-all term to describe militias that have risen up to defend their communities over the past year -- will likely defy heavy-handed crackdowns due to its lack of unity. And, unlike in 1982 when Hama was surrounded and pulverized by Assad’s father, the whole world will be watching events unfold in Syria much more closely, this time through a lens provided by the Syrian opposition.

Important Washington organizations like WINEP and Brookings are taking careful note of their pronouncements, as are influential media sources in the Middle East such as Yedioth Ahronoth and Al Jazeera. Politicians and opinion leaders are paying attention to what the SNC has to say about Assad’s future and military intervention. Whether the Council will be able to push a seemingly hesitant NATO into taking military action remains to be seen.

Paul Mutter is a Fellow at Truthout and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

I missed this, but it turns out that in addition to a bevy of lobbying – much of it centered on English-language media management – before and after demonstrations peaked, Bahrain’s government was also quick to tap American expertise in containing public demonstrations following the release of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report:

… [the news that] the former police chief of Philadelphia and Miami, John Timoney, has been recruited by Bahrain’s Interior Ministry to advise the Bahrainis on policing strategies, will come as no comfort to those in the opposition hoping that the next American intervention would be more constructive. They may be particularly sceptical considering his policing style was so notorious it came to be dubbed Timoney’s ‘Miami Model’ by Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who covered the chief’s heavy-handed policing of protests around the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000 and the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit meeting in Miami in 2003. Timoney’s militarized crowd control strategy involved ‘the heavy use of concussion grenades, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and baton charges to disperse protesters.’

Timoney has a reputation as a turn-around police chief from his work in the US, but his handling of these demonstrations has made him controversial. Another controversial cop, John Yates of the UK (who gained notoriety during the News of the World voicemail hacking scandal), is also working with the Interior Ministry now. Given the charges of torture presented against Bahraini police, I imagine everyone in these circles is keeping the case of Ian Henderson in mind, a former British colonial officer who led Bahrain’s secret police for 32 years and gained the sobriquet “Butcher of Bahrain” because of the security apparatus’s use of torture against dissidents during that time.

Security ties such as this are by no means uncommon in the region, though the focus is usually focused on counterterrorism rather than public demonstrations. The Monitor Group, a Massachusetts-based lobbying firm, helped Muatassim al-Qadhafi train and staff his proposed National Security Council before the Libya uprising curtailed its creation. The New York Times reported last May that Erik Prince, former Blackwater chief, was building up a mercenary army in the UAE on the Crown Prince’s dirham.

Israel and the US often share counterterrorism techniques and trainings. The US has been involved in past Bahraini police trainings, as have trainers from the UK: “British police have helped to train their counterparts in Bahrain, Libya, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” The Independent reported. The Saudi National Guard, which was deployed in force to Bahrain last spring, also received UK training. Military and intelligence training for security forces is also common – Iraq, of course, is the most notable Middle Eastern example of such a (multinational) effort, but the US has also funded and trained Lebanese, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, and West Bank Palestinian security forces.

Although Washington places great emphasis on the place of ethical conduct in these courses, ethics don’t mean much when the police in question are not held accountable to civil society and operate as a state within a state. WikiLeaks shows that the FBI had trained members of the notorious State Security Investigations in Egypt.

Elham Fakhro and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen note that while “recruiting John Yates and John Timoney to re-train Bahrain’s security services may play well in London and Washington,” it “leaves unresolved the structural exclusion of large numbers of Bahraini citizens from an organisation many perceive as exclusionary and deeply-partial.”

Blogger and Bahrain watcher Justin Gengler is a bit more forthright in his criticism:

Bahrain is covering all of its bases. If you are going to bring in a expert trainer in police brutality [Timoney] then you are definitely going to want someone [Yates] specialized in illegal wire-tapping and police surveillance as well, not to mention someone who recognizes the need to withhold a page or two (or 11,000) of evidence for reasons of political expediency.

Paul Mutter is a Fellow at Truthout and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

From its birth more than 60 years ago, Israel has always presented itself as “an oasis of democracy in a sea of despotism,” an outpost of pluralism surrounded by tyranny. While that equality never fully applied to the country’s Arab citizens, Israel was, for the most part an open society. But today political rights are under siege by right-wing legislators, militant settlers, and a growing religious divide in the Israeli army, all of which threaten to silence internal opposition to the policies of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Since that may include a war with Iran—and the probable involvement of the U.S. in such a conflict—the move to stifle dissent should be a major concern for Americans.

The U.S. media has reported on growing tensions between Israeli women and the ultra-orthodox Haredim over the latter’s demand for sexual segregation of schools, public transport, and public life. But while orthodox Jews spitting on eight-year old girls for being “immodestly dressed” has garnered the headlines, the most serious threats to democratic rights have gone largely unreported, including a host of proposed or enacted laws. Some of these include:

*A law that allows Jewish communities to bar Arab families from living among them. Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population.

*A law that makes it illegal to advocate an academic, cultural or economic boycott of Israel, including settler communities.

*A law that would limit the power of the Supreme Court.

*A law that bars any state institutions—including schools and theaters—from commemorating the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” the term Palestinians use to describe the loss of their lands in the 1948 war that established Israel.

*A law that prohibits Palestinians from living with their Israeli spouses within Israel proper and denies them citizenship.

*A law that drops Arabic as an official language.

*A law that requires anyone obtaining a driver’s license to swear loyalty to the state.

*A law that would limit the number of petitions non-governmental organizations, including peace and human rights groups, could file before the Supreme Court.

*A law that forces human rights and peace groups to limit the money they can receive from abroad, and forces them to go through burdensome registration requirements.

Tzipi Livni, former foreign secretary and head of the Kadima Party, told the Knesset that Arab states were “trying to become a democracy, while we—with these bills—are headed toward dictatorship.”

Most of these laws are being pushed by Israel’s rightwing Likud and Yisreal Beiteinu parties, but the proposal to drop Arabic comes from the Kadima Party. Ram-rodding many of these laws are Likid’s so-called “fantastic four”: Danny Danon, Yariv Levin, Tzipi Hotovely, and Ofir Akunis.

“We are in the process of reducing freedom of speech and the freedom of association, and we are infringing on the right to equality, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli Arab,” Mordechai Kremnitizer, a professor of law and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute told the Financial Times.  “We are also weakening all the elements in society that have the function of criticizing the governments, including the courts. ”

Israeli society is filled with sharp divisions on everything from war with Iran to growing economic inequality. Israel has the highest poverty rate out of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and ranks twenty-fifth in health care investment. The poverty rate for Israeli Arabs is between 50 and 55 percent.

Starting in the 1980s, Israel began dismantling its social safety net, a trend that Netanyahu sharply accelerated when he served as finance minister in 2003. While slashing money for housing, education, and transport, he cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Most of all, however, Israeli governments poured the nation’s wealth into colonizing the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, where, according to Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center based in Jerusalem, Israel has spent about $100 billion. A vast network of bypass roads, security zones, and walled settlements siphoned off money that could have gone for housing, education and transportation in Israel. Special tax rebates and rent subsidies for settlers added to that bill. Some 15 percent of the Israeli housing budget is used to support four percent of its population in the Occupied Territories. Add to that the 20 percent the military budget sucks up, and it seems increasingly clear that the settlement endeavor is no longer sustainable.

Wealth disparity—a handful of families control 30 percent of Israel’s GDP—was partly behind last summer’s social explosion that at one point put some 450,000 people into the streets of Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem demanding reductions in rent and food prices. But so far, organizers of those massive demonstrations have avoided making the link between growing income inequality and Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories. Many of these new laws are aimed at organizations that have been trying to do precisely that.

There are other divisions as well. Israelis are split down the middle over whether to attack Iran—43 percent yes, 41 percent no—but 64 percent support the creation of a Middle East nuclear free zone, and 65 percent feel that neither Israel nor Iran should have nuclear weapons. Those are not exactly the home front sentiments that a government wants when it is contemplating going to war.

Besides the avalanche of right-wing legislation coming out of the Knesset, Israel is increasingly at war with itself over the role of religion in daily life, a conflict that is playing out in one of Israel’s core institutions, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Two years ago, soldiers of the Kfir Brigade, a unit deployed in the West Bank, unveiled banners declaring they would refuse orders to remove settlers. By international law, all settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, but Israel claims that only unregistered “outposts” are against the law and subject to removal. The soldiers held signs that read, “We will not expel Jews.” Six of them were arrested and spent 30 days in the stockade.

The soldiers were graduates of army-sponsored “hesder yeshivas” that allow orthodox soldiers to divide their time between active service and Torah study. Settler rabbis rallied around the six and even provided money for some of the soldiers’ families.

Writing in the progressive Jewish weekly, the Forward, Columnist J.J. Goldberg says that a “secret report” in 2008 warned that such “yeshiva graduates comprise 30 percent of the junior officer corps and rising. In a decade they will be the military’s senior commanders. If a peace agreement is not reached in 15 years or so, Israel may no long have an army willing to carry out its side.”

A majority of Israelis support some kind of compromise to achieve a settlement with the Palestinians, but in the most recent set of talks, the Netanyahu government made it clear that Israel will not surrender any settlements, any part of Jerusalem, or the Jordan Valley. In essence, Palestinians would be forced to live in isolated enclaves surrounded by networks of restricted roads and over 120 settlements. The Netanyahu proposal not only violates numerous United Nations resolutions and international law, no Palestinian government that accepted such an offer would survive for long.

But Israelis who protest an offer that is widely seen as little more than a way to kill the possibility of serious negotiations may find themselves treated in much the same way as Israel has dealt with its Arab citizens.

Those who agitate against the current government may find themselves hit with the new libel law that no longer requires plaintiffs to prove they were damaged and increases awards six-fold. Bloggers, who lack institutional support, are particularly fearful of the new law. Organizations critical of the government that try to raise money from sources outside the country could face huge fines.

According to Hagai El-Ad, director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there is growing resistance within Israel to the attempt to silence critics, as well as pressure from abroad, including the American Jewish community. Even a pro-Netanyahu hawk like the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman warns “the very democratic character of the state is being eroded.” That resistance has delayed some of the more odious proposals, but the “fantastic four” and their allies are pushing hard to get them on the books.

Why should Americans care? Because if Netanyahu silences his domestic opponents, he will have carte blanche to do as he pleases. And if Tel Aviv attacks Iran, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to keep clear of it. For starters, the IDF will be firing U.S.-made cruise missiles, flying American-made F-15s, and dropping “made in the USA” bunker busters. With the exception of the monarchs from the Gulf states, no one in the Middle East—or most of the world—is going to give Washington a pass on this one.

Does America need another war? If it doesn’t protest the assault on democracy in Israel, it may get one, whether it likes it or not.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

A US$53 million arms sale, put on hold in November pending an investigation by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry into Bahraini security forces’ human rights violations, is being pushed forward by the Obama Administration in defiance of Congressional opposition and criticism from human rights observers. In the meantime, a new arms sale is going through, which the US State Department claims has nothing to do with the original one. The Cable reports that the new deal was going to be done “without any formal notification to the public,” and that the State Department told Congress that it has “gone above and beyond what is legally or customarily required” to address critics’ human rights complaints.

At the same time, the Kingdom of Bahrain is denying entry to observers from the US-based Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First organizations, which have been sharply critical of how security forces and the judiciary have behaved towards demonstrators.

I think the logic behind the Obama Administration's approach works (in theory) as follows: a trickle of aid coming at the same time the government is reportedly taking investigators' reports into consideration will compel the royal family to do more to democratize the country in exchange for more aid.

If the royal family changes its mind about those observers, I'll start entertaining more optimistic thoughts about the efficacy of this "behind the scenes diplomacy." Why? Because if they were being let in, it would demonstrate that the US is actually accomplishing a conditional aid policy that is pushing the government to fully implement the recommendations in the Commission's report. I often turn to the concept of "uncivil society" to discuss entrenched interests in countries experiencing democratic protests, and it's clear that the US is going to have to offer tastier carrots, and brandish much heavier sticks, if it is truly committed to democratization in Bahrain (and Egypt). 

Granted, if these observers' entry became permissible (and it's not an impossibility), it could just as easily be read as a decision by the government to chaperone these people around to mute further criticism -- something their PR firms back in the US have already been working very hard at (the Kingdom of Bahrain has retained the US lobbying group Qorvis for US$40,000 a month since 2010, with a particular emphasis on English-language media management).

Nothing signals "our priorities" like using a legal backdoor to funnel arms to a key Arab ally in the face of human rights criticism, and this holds true along the coastlines of both American littorals, the Mediterranean and the Gulf. How we respond to growing pressure on NGOs in Egypt will address the dichotomies facing Egyptians willing to work with Western NGO. The resumption of arms sales to Bahrain, alongside the lockout of these groups, offers a much more concrete lesson of what Bahrainis can expect in the coming months. 

At least when Moscow decides to send a message about a Mideast naval base, it sends that message clearly.  

Paul Mutter is a Fellow at Truthout and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.