Collapse of UN nonproliferation session

By Fred Goldstein

When the Bush National Security Council, with its Cabinet members and advisers, sits around the table to survey the world these days, its discussions are undoubtedly filled with expressions of frustration. When State Department diplomats attend functions in capitals around the world, they must be feeling the chill wind of negative global public opinion as they try to skillfully steer clear of embarrassing subjects--like the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, Amnesty International’s damning report on torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, the desecration of the Koran, nuclear “bunker busters,” failed coups in Venezuela, the state of the dollar and like subjects.

These are hardly topics to conjure up respect or win friends and influence governments. But they are on the minds of every government, every diplomat and every leader of a mass movement.

A new hot topic that is surely agitating the diplomatic circuit is the disastrous collapse of the much-awaited month-long United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty five-year review, which just concluded without any resolution.

Over 150 governments came seeking to attain their ends. The vast majority of them represented an even vaster proportion of the world’s population. These non-nuclear states, most of which were once colonies, seek to enforce the legality of the treaty on Washington and to restrain and push back the Pentagon and Israel.

But also present was the U.S. administration, which had long planned to use the session to gang up on Iran and North Korea, while retaining all its own aggressive nuclear options.

In the end, not only was the Bush administration unable to accomplish its aims, but it ran into a firestorm of anti-U.S. sentiment and was forced to retreat from the UN arena.

“The UN conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty failed to reach substantive agreement among participants Friday,” wrote UPI on May 31, “with the United States singled out for most of the blame. ... 'This is the most acute failure in the history of the NPT,' said Thomas Graham, U.S. negotiator at the 1995 NPT review."

“The United States tried to keep the focus on alleged nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea instead of its pledges to whittle down its own nuclear arsenal,” wrote the Los Angeles Times of May 28. “Iran, which contends that its atomic program is strictly for generating electricity, refused to discuss proposals to restrict access to nuclear fuel and objected to being singled out as a ‘proliferation concern.’ And Egypt joined Iran in demanding that the conference address Israel’s nuclear status and declare the Middle East a ‘nuclear-free zone.’"

The U.S. refused to reaffirm the 13 steps toward nuclear disarmament it had agreed to in 2000 or allow discussion of Israel’s nuclear status.

It is significant that a normally compliant client state of the U.S. like the Egyptian government joined with Iran to set the tone of rebellion against Washington’s bullying. The atmosphere was so hostile that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pulled back from attending, although all the other governments were represented at the foreign ministry level.

Iran's 'withering attack'

The conference, chaired by Brazil, allowed Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif to be the final speaker. Zarif really summarized the overwhelming attitude of the conference when, according to UPI, he “let loose on Washington with both barrels, delivering a withering attack. …”

“He said the United States adopted its nuclear posture by stressing the essential role of nuclear weapons as an effective tool for achieving security and in foreign policy objectives; developing new nuclear weapons systems and constructing new facilities for producing nuclear weapons, resuming efforts to develop and deploy tactical nuclear weapons despite commitment to reverse this process and effectively reduce them, targeting non-nuclear weapons states party to the treaty and ‘planning to attack these states.’”

Zarif attacked Washington for abrogating the anti-ballistic missile treaty, rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, continuing the deployment of nuclear forces on other territories, providing a nuclear umbrella for non-nuclear weapon states and signing an agreement of cooperation with Israel to provide scientists access to its nuclear facilities.

“The extremist attitude," he continued, "seems to indicate that no lessons have been learned from the nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If history is any guide, nuclear arms, ladies and gentlemen, are in the most dangerous hands.”

Washington declared that it has other, smaller and friendlier forums where it can take up its nuclear plans, such as the G-8 (the club of imperialist powers), the Nuclear Material Suppliers Group, a nebulous group of nuclear powers, and the friendliest of all places, the State Department, where Rice is going to “reveal” new efforts to organize countries into a so-called Proliferation Security Initiative. This is a group of countries that has allegedly agreed to work with Washington to interdict the shipment of nuclear materials.

The problem is that Rice is going to be “vague about most of the details” when she reveals “quiet successes” the U.S. government has had, because “some foreign governments are concerned about retribution if they are seen to be closely cooperating with the United States and other Western nations.” (New York Times, May 31)

At the UN conference, Washington came before the governments of the world and displayed arrogant, imperialist disregard for world opinion. But that opinion was almost uniformly hostile and the Bush administration was unable to make an inch of significant diplomatic progress in its attempts to isolate North Korea and Iran. Instead, it became the universal object of criticism in a major world forum that lasted a full month.

The Bush group pulled back Condoleezza Rice from attending and adopted the reactionary tactic of a boycott. But in truth, Washington was forced to turn down the opportunity to address the world forum because its political line was totally discredited. Washington went there to isolate Iran and the DPRK, but got isolated itself. It has retreated to options, outside of the framework of treaties, that do not require the permission of any others but fellow imperialists and puppets.

In every diplomatic forum, whether it is the six-party talks on North Korea or the European talks with Iran, where Washington is in the background permanently trying to dictate to both the Europeans and the Iranian government, it has met with frustration.

U.S. can't isolate Venezuela

In Latin America it has attempted to isolate the revolutionary government of Hugo Chávez, but has been unable to do so. Now the Bush administration is in the unenviable position of openly giving protection to a Cuban counter-revolutionary terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA agent who blew up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 people aboard. He was in a Venezuelan prison awaiting trial for the bombing when the CIA broke him out in 1985.

Tens of thousands of people recently demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas protesting the refusal of Washington to arrest Posada Carriles as a preliminary step to extradition. Demonstrators were defending Venezuelan sovereignty, including the right for the state-owned oil company, PdVSA, to be free of sabotage by U.S. imperialism and its Venezuelan ruling class stooges. This demonstration followed one of 1.2 million people that took place in Havana earlier.

Rice has been working overtime to isolate Venezuela. But the Chávez government, with its growing alliance with revolutionary socialist Cuba and the government of Fidel Castro, is growing more popular by the day as it challenges the hated Yankee imperialists and defies their sabotage, coup attempts and threats. In her confirmation talks, Rice denounced the Chávez government and she recently traveled to Latin America to try to resuscitate the Organization of American States and use it against Venezuela.

The May 17 Cuban newspaper Granma, commenting on this maneuver, recalled Che Guevara’s characterization of the OAS as “the Ministry of the Yankee Colonies.” Washington is trying to put over a new OAS committee, pushed by reactionary Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, that would “monitor,” that is, intervene in Venezuela, to see that it is “democratic.” According to the Bush definition, that means leave the propertied classes alone and let the U.S. take Venezuelan oil.

Jose Miguel Insulza, former interior minister of Chile, who is supposed to be a “leftist,” and was not the original U.S. candidate, has agreed to try to finesse some sort of deal at the upcoming OAS meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., starting in June. Rice will chair the meeting.

But already there is rumbling against the plan. Argentina, Mexico and other Latin American governments are getting nervous about such a proposal coming up at Fort Lauderdale. Washington is going to have its hands full diplomatically, just as it did in the UN and in every other forum.

New fighter-bombers to Korea

The more isolated Washington becomes diplomatically, the more dangerous it becomes militarily. The danger of U.S. direct intervention, assassination, subversion, and so on will grow stronger if the Bush administration does not get its way in Fort Lauderdale. Likewise, it is becoming more dangerous after having suffered a defeat at the UN.

Vice President Dick Cheney went on CNN's Larry King Live show on May 30 to attack North Korea viciously and prod China to line up with Washington. And a week earlier, according to the New York Sun of May 31, “the Pentagon announced that it would send 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea.” A Pentagon statement said that “aircraft crews for the planes needed to familiarize themselves with the Korean peninsula’s terrain.”

A Reuters dispatch of May 28 said that the F-117A Nighthawks, which are radar-evading planes, “began flying from Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico to U.S. air bases in South Korea this week in a deployment expected to last four months… .” About 250 airmen from the U.S. 49th Fighter Wing are going along.

Last summer about 24 stealth fighters were sent to Kunsan Air Base in South Korea to “penetrate deep into enemy air space to deliver satellite and laser-guided munitions onto time-sensitive, high-value targets,” according to the Air Force.

In March of this year F-15s were sent to Guam, following a gradual deployment of three submarines. The Pentagon is considering sending an aircraft carrier to the region. This deployment is aimed not only at North Korea but at China in the Taiwan Straits. These menacing gestures are combined with numerous rumors and reports of new military guidelines that would allow tactical nuclear strikes at Iran and North Korea aimed at destroying their nuclear facilities.

Base closings and Pentagon's global plans

These deployments to the East give a strong clue to the meaning of the latest round of base closings in the U.S. proposed by Rumsfeld. The so-called Base Realignment and Closing plan is part of the global military posture review scheduled to be delivered next year.

Much of the emphasis is on taking troops out of Germany and from the Northeast and the Midwest of the U.S. The old positioning of the military was to fight the USSR. With the collapse of the USSR, the reorientation of military forces is towards the East and the South.

“United States’ nuclear strategy has been rewritten, as have regional war-fighting plans, and efforts are under way to restructure and relocate the forces permanently based overseas. The goal is to reduce the number of large, cold-war-era bases, especially in Germany, in favor of access to countries closer to future battlefronts across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa,” wrote Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt. (New York Times, May 11)

The Pentagon is planning to centralize and coordinate the services; use more advanced technology in warfare; and reposition its forces in accordance with the aspirations of U.S. monopoly capital to dominate the East in the coming century. That is what the base closings are fundamentally about.

Democratic Party caves in

So while U.S. imperialism is floundering politically and economically and is in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, the militarists are plotting the future.

There is no one in the capitalist establishment, and no opposition in the Democratic Party, with an alternative to the aggressive designs of the Pentagon, the oil companies, the military-industrial complex and the monopolies, who crave new world markets and wage slaves to exploit.

The Democrats have voted for every military appropriation. While denouncing the right wing and criticizing Rumsfeld for the disaster in Iraq, they sit quietly by as he and his military cohorts chart out plans for future aggression on an even larger and more disastrous scale than Iraq.

Of course, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have not learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. As imperialist military strategists, they cannot. They regard Iraq as an aberration. Otherwise they would not be planning to repeat the same fundamental error they made in Iraq--underestimating the willingness of the masses to fight back against imperialist and colonialist aggression on a global scale involving Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But the spineless Democratic Party leadership, which considers its judicial “compromise” on reactionary judges to be a great victory, and which signs on the dotted line to pay for a war that is bankrupting the people here and slaughtering Iraqis, is a treacherous mis-leadership that must be disregarded and bypassed in favor of the struggle of the masses of people. That is the only force that can push back the imperialists, in Iraq or right here at home.

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