TGIF: Trump and Putin – How about Getting Rid of Your Nukes?

The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.

--"It's Two Minutes to Midnight," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

I, for one, was much disappointed by the Trump-Putin summit -- but not for the reasons most others were. I was not hoping that Trump would punch Putin in the nose or insult him or declare new sanctions. Nor was I hoping he would cancel the meeting.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Trump, North Korea, and Iran

As one of the original settlers of the sparsely populated territory situated between the deranged and warring states of Antitrumplandia and Philotrumplandia, I'm breathing easier today. 

Anyone who longs for peace can only welcome what Trump and Kim did in Singapore this week. It's just the beginning, of course, and things could go south at any time, but -- and this shouldn't have to be said -- it's preferable to the other available alternatives. Trump's earlier threats were insanely reckless and risky, and I stand by that judgment. One cannot point to Tuesday as proof that Trump's initial stance was reasonable. No person with a gram of historical knowledge -- not to mention moral decency -- can think that peace-making required a threat to visit "fire and fury" on an entire society. In fact, Trump's threat did not get Kim to the table; on the contrary, Kim's nuclear tests
and South Korean President Moon got Trump to the table.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Trump's "Fire and Fury" Wouldn't Be the First for North Korea

Leave it to Donald Trump to threaten to rain "fire and fury" on North Korean people the same week that the world observed the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. government's atomic bombings of Japanese civilians. In case anyone missed the message, Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis warned that the Kim Jong-un regime's actions risk the "destruction of its people." He wasn't talking about Kim's cruel communism.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

TGIF: Talk to, Don't Provoke, North Korea

There’s little more we can do than hope that some cool heads around Donald Trump are telling him he’d be nuts to attack North Korea. I don’t know who they might be. Still, we must hope.

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

71th Anniversary of the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Today marks the 71st anniversary of U.S. President Harry Truman's atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki took place three days later in 1945. Some 90,000-166,000 individuals were killed in Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bombing killed 39,000-80,000 human beings. (It has come to my attention that the U.S. military bombed Tokyo on Aug. 14--after destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after Emperor Hirohito expressed his readiness to surrender.)

There isn't much to be said about those unspeakable atrocities against civilians that hasn't been said many times before. The U.S. government never needed atomic bombs to commit mass murder, but it dropped them anyway. (Remember this when judging the official U.S. moralistic stance toward Iran.) Its "conventional" weapons have been potent enough. (See the earlier firebombing of Tokyo.) Nor did it need the bombs to persuade Japan to surrender; the Japanese government had been suing for peace. The U.S. government may not have used atomic weapons since 1945, but it has not yet given up mass murder as a political/military tactic. Presidents and presidential candidates are still expected to say that, with respect to nuclear weapons, "no options are off the table."

Mario Rizzo has pointed out that Americans were upset by the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 yet seem not to be bothered that "their" government murdered many more Japanese civilians in two days. Many more died as a consequence of the bombings.  Conservatives, ironically, were among the earliest critics of Truman's mass murder. It's also worth noting that the top military leaders of the day opposed the use of atomic bombs.

As Harry Truman once said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just drop A-bombs on their cities and they think it's hell." (Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have.)

Some people still see the A-bombs as the only alternative to invasion, which would have cost many more civilian lives. Now there's the fallacy of the false alternative in dying color. Why couldn't the U.S. military have called it a day and gone home? Why the assumption that the state must destroy and conquer its "enemy"? Why demand unconditional surrender? (To back up a step, why go to war against Japan at all? Pearl Harbor was the result of systematic, intentional provocation -- as Herbert Hoover and others pointed out at the time) -- perhaps with Roosevelt's foreknowledge. A government less concerned with a rival for its and its allies' colonial possessions might have not gotten involved.)

Rad Geek People's Daily has a poignant post here. Rad says: "As far as I am aware, the atomic bombing of the Hiroshima city center, which deliberately targeted a civilian center and killed over half of the people living in the city, remains the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the world."

Other things to read: Anthony Gregory’s “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State,”  David Henderson’s “Remembering Hiroshima,”  G.E.M. Anscombe's "Mr. Truman's Decree," and my own "Truman, A-bombs, and the Killing of Innocents."

Finally, if you read nothing else on this subject, read Ralph Raico's article here.

[A version of this post appeared previously.]

Israel Wanted Iran Talks to Deal with Nukes Only

Opponents of the Iran deal -- the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- loudly complain that it deals only with the nuclear issue. Why, they ask, didn't the P5+1 talks also take up Iran's detention of Americans and its alleged machinations in the Middle East?

They should ask the Israelis.

It was, after all, Israel’s leaders who insisted that the nuclear file be addressed first and on its own, and who pushed back hard against any attempt to forge a more comprehensive understanding or grand bargain with Iran (an idea explored over a decade ago in back-channel talks during the term of President Mohammad Khatami). Last summer for instance, when Iran and the West found themselves on the same side against Islamic State (also called ISIS) in Iraq, senior Israeli Minister Yuval Steinitz, who was head of the Iran file at the time, noted that Israel had pushed for and received commitments from “the Americans and the British and the French and the Germans—that a total separation will be enforced,” that is, the West would not negotiate with Iran on regional issues until the nuclear question was dealt with. Israel, in other words, demanded that the nuclear file be treated as a standalone issue—the very thing that it now criticizes about the deal. 

So writes David Levy at Foreign Affairs magazine. The point is that Israel did not want to risk a rapprochement between the United States and Iran, a prospect that could water down Israel's influence in the United States and in the region.

Iran had offered a comprehensive grand bargain to the United States in 2003, in which all outstanding issues would be discussed, including Iran's support for the Palestinians. Indeed, as part of the proffered grand bargain, Iran accepted Saudi Arabia's previous Arab Peace Initiative (2002, renewed 2007), which would have included recognition of Israel in a two-state context. President George W. Bush gave Iran's overture the back of his hand, having branded Iran in 2002 as a member of the Axis of Evil along with Iraq and North Korea. (This was a fine thank-you for Iran's cooperation after the 9/11 attacks.)

TGIF: The U.S.-Israel Conflict Is Finally Visible for All to See

Thanks to the Iran nuclear deal, something remarkable is happening in American politics: the irreconcilable conflict of interest between most Americans on one side and Israel and its American supporters on the other is on full display and impossible to ignore. In the past the conflict could be papered over with grand empty rhetoric about the two sides being in "lock-step" and the absence of "daylight" between them. But no more. The conflict is out in the open where everyone can see it. Iran should be thanked for this valuable service.

Two Cheers for the Iran Agreement

The nuclear agreement with Iran is good for two reasons: it reduces the chance of war, and it promises relief from sanctions for the Iranian people.

Although American officials still say that war is an option, the chance has now shrunk. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that his military alone cannot deal a death blow to Iran. For that he needs America, and he’s far less likely to find a willing partner now.

That the Iranians will have sanctions lifted is something all humane people will welcome. President Obama says the sanctions “crippled the Iranian economy…. Their economy has been cratering as a consequence of the sanctions.” But he is wrong. “Economy” is an abstraction; it cannot be crippled or cratered. What has been crippled and cratered are the lives of innocent Iranians, who have had a difficult time obtaining food and medicines. The sanctions regime is a form of warfare against noncombatants. Moreover, as Gareth Porter shows, it did not even achieve what Obama says it was intended to achieve.

The good that will come out of this agreement cannot be overstated. The radically diminished prospect for war -- which would set the Mideast aflame and inflict hardship on the rest of the world as well -- and the improvement in the everyday lives decent Iranians are causes for rejoicing.

But the agreement has a significant downside too, in that it reinforces American hegemony. It does so by the very fact that the U.S. government is regarded by the media and others as the legitimate prosecutor, judge, and probation officer of Iran's government. The U.S. government, of course, commands overwhelming military power, and in that respect alone it has the ability to impose demands on others. But that does not mean an American president has the moral authority to do so.

By what standard of a morality may a government make demands on others when it has wreaked death and destruction on countless societies with its military might, including the dropping of two atomic bombs on innocent Japanese noncombatants; launched wars of aggression; supported some of the worst dictators in recent times; made possible the use of death squads and other forms of terror; tortured people; overthrown governments (including Iran’s in 1953) in order to install puppet regimes; underwritten aggressive wars (such as Iraq’s war, complete with chemical weapons, against Iran in the 1980s; Israel's against Lebanon, which spawned Hezbollah; and now Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen); facilitated or waged covert, proxy, and cyber wars (e.g., against Iran); and backed the occupation of innocent people’s land (most relevantly, Israel’s occupation of Palestine through ethnic cleansing and military conquest, which spawned Hamas)?

Iran never threatened the United States or Israel. It has not tried to build a nuclear bomb, and even if it were to do so, the weapon would be of no value except perhaps as a deterrent. Yet the nuclear-armed United States, and its ally Israel -- the Mideast’s nuclear monopolist -- haughtily presume to tell Iran what it may and may not do. The system of state sovereignty we suffer under is illegitimate, but as long as it exists, the U.S. government will only cause mayhem by violating the “sovereignty” of other nations. Under prevailing rules, Iran is a sovereign nation, so the U.S. government should have no more authority to demand that Iran open itself to inspections of its military and scientific facilities than Iran has to make that demand of the U.S. government. (Actually, maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing.)

It’s especially outrageous for Israel, which has aggressed against its neighbors, to stand in judgment of Iran. Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and was subject to inspections before the latest negotiations. Israel will not sign the treaty. It won’t even admit what has long been known: that it has hundreds of nuclear weapons, which were built with smuggled components thanks to the connivance of law-breaking American officials and supporters. Israel, like the United States, also opposes making the Mideast a nuclear-free zone, which Iran supports.

So lift a glass to the agreement. But let's not rest until the American hegemon is caged.

[Related articles: My "Can Iran Trust the United States?"; Richard Lachman, Michael Schwartz, and Kevin Young, "Why They Hate the Deal with Iran."]

Sheldon Richman keeps the blog "Free Association" and is a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society. Become a patron today!

Thomas Friedman and the Wish for War with Iran

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times op-ed-page representative of the foreign-policy elite, is unhappy with how the soon-to-be-completed Iran nuclear talks are going. He says President Obama, like his predecessor George W. Bush, hasn't been tough enough. Obama holds all the cards, Friedman says, but somehow the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dictating terms. He writes:

The Real Nuclear Threat in the Middle East

To get a sense of how badly the regime in Iran wants sanctions relief for the Iranian people, you have to do more than contemplate the major concessions it has made in negotiations with the United States and the rest of the P5+1. Not only is Iran willing to dismantle a major part of its peaceful civilian nuclear program, to submit to the most intrusive inspects, to redesign a reactor, to eliminate two-thirds of its centrifuges, to get rid of much of its enriched uranium, and to limit nuclear research -- it must do all this while being harangued by the nuclear monopolist of the Middle East -- Israel -- which remains, unlike Iran, a nonsigner of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and faces no inspections or limits on its production of nuclear weapons.

This is something out of Alice in Wonderland. The Islamic Republic of Iran, born in 1979, has not attacked another country. (With U.S. help, Iraq attacked Iran in 1980.) In contrast, Israel has attacked its Arab neighbors several times its founding, including two devastating invasions and a long occupation of Lebanon, not to mention repeated onslaughts in the Gaza Strip and the military occupation of the West Bank. Israel has also repeatedly threatened war against Iran and engaged in covert and proxy warfare, including the assassination of scientists. Even with Iran progressing toward a nuclear agreement, Israel (like the United States) continues to threaten Iran.

Yet Iran is universally cast as the villain (with scant evidence) and Israel the vulnerable victim.

Senate Republicans Push for War with Iran

Iran has its hardliners on the United States, and the United States has its hardliners on Iran. It’s understandable if you think they are working together to thwart detente between the two countries. Neither side wants its government to negotiate a nuclear deal and thaw the cold war that’s existed since 1979.

This week hardliners in the U.S. Senate took another step toward thwarting detente by writing to Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei that if he and President Obama negotiate a “mere executive agreement” on Iran’s (civilian) nuclear program that is not approved by Congress, it will bind neither Obama’s successor nor a future Congress. The letter comes on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bellicose speech about Iran before Congress. Like that speech, the senators’ letter is intended to sabotage the P5+1 talks now in progress.

America Must Reject Netanyahu’s War Cry on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington this week to prepare the American people for war against Iran. Backed by American neoconservatives, the Israel lobby, and assorted other war hawks, Netanyahu insists that Iran intends to build a nuclear weapon and thus is an “existential threat” to Israel. He has no confidence that President Obama will negotiate an agreement that once and for all will end Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions.

Thus the prime minister’s objective is nothing less than to wreck the current negotiations and push America into a regime-changing war against Iran.

Netanyahu’s narrative is a fabric of lies and omissions.

Read it here.

Nuclear Monopolists Will Be Nuclear Monopolists

The Associated Press reports:

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved an Arab-backed resolution Tuesday calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight.

The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to "accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons" and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United States, Canada, Palau and Micronesia joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained.

The US position: What's sauce for Iran is not sauce for Israel. The difference is that Iran has no nukes and has never tried to obtain or build them.

Op-ed: The Roots of Iran's Nuclear Secrecy

Iran has had an innocent reason to develop its civilian nuclear industry largely in secrecy: The United States.

Read about it here.

Op-ed: The Iranian Threat that Never Was

If you take politicians and the mainstream media seriously, you believe that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and has relentlessly engaged in covert efforts to build one. Even if you are aware that Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, you may believe that those who run the Islamic Republic have cleverly found ways to construct a nuclear-weapons industry almost undetected. Therefore, you may conclude, Democratic and Republican administrations have been justified in pressuring Iran to come clean and give up its “nuclear program.”

But you would be wrong.

Read it here.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Predictable

Iran, which has no nuclear weapons and is known not to be seeking to build one, is a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and thus subject to rigorous inspections by the International Atomic Energy Administration, which has repeatedly certified that Iran's uranium has not been diverted to weapons production.

Israel, which has at least 200 nuclear warheads (including those launchable from submarines), is not a party to the NPT and is not subject to inspections.

Guess which country's government thinks the NPT is of no use in the Middle East?

Israel, of course. According to PressTV, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the NPT is worthless in the Middle East. He insists that it is Iran, not Israel, that is the aggressor. Or, as Chico Marx said, "Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?"

US, Israel Prevented Mideast from Being WMD-Free

President Obama boasts that Russia and Syria would not be willing to consider the surrender of Syria's chemical weapons had it not been for administration's "credible threat of military force."

Wrong.

Eight years before the Syrian civil war broke out, President Bashar al-Assad, backed by most of the Arab world, proposed that the Middle East be turned into a weapons-of mass-destruction-free zone. Biological and nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons, would have been banned and current stockpiles destroyed. Syria proposed this in 2003 in the form of a Security Council resolution, but it was not the first time it floated the idea.

What happened in 2003?

The resolution was tabled after the Bush administration threatened to veto it. Why the veto threat? Because Israel had -- and has -- no intention of giving up its weapons of mass destruction, including its nuclear arsenal of at least 200 warheads. In fact, Israel won't even acknowledge what everyone knows: that it possesses this massive and deadly arsenal. American usually defers to Israel at the UN (and everywhere else). It would be political suicide not to. (Activists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are currently swarming the halls of Congress lobbying for a U.S. war against Syria, with Iran next in line.)

Thus many years ago Syria was willing to get rid of its chemical weapons without being under threat of military force. All it asked was that other states in the region possessing unconventional weapons -- such as Israel and Egypt, which are not parties to the various conventions on such weapons -- get rid of theirs.

Would the Obama administration threaten to veto the same resolution today? What do you think?

Now I Understand

I just listened to Secretary State John Kerry's speech on Syria and chemical weapons. He pointed out that such weapons were banned internationally after Word War I. That sheds light on a question that has bugged me for a long time. Now I see why Harry Truman dropped two A-bombs on Japan in 1945: Chemical weapons were illegal.

Hersh on Iran’s Nonexistent Nuclear Program

The REAL Reason to Fear an Iranian Nuke

This from a leading neocon intellectual, Danielle Pletka, vice president, foreign and defense policy studies, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, "See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you that Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately." And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

In other words, if Iran were to build a nuke (by the way, Iran is not doing so), it might act responsibly, which would be interpreted to mean that Iran is in fact a responsible power in the Middle East.

And that would be bad -- because the U.S. government would then lose a major rationalization for dominating the Middle East. Take away the Iranian “problem” and there goes a lot of prestigious and profitable power opportunities for U.S. officials and government contractors. So Iran must be stopped from developing a weapon that 1) it is not developing, and 2) that it wouldn’t use if it were developing it.

See the Pletka video for yourself.




Pletka's colleague Thomas Donnelly agrees: "We’re fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East."

When will these arrogant people realize that managing a balance of power is a dangerous mission (though lucrative for special interests, to be sure). They might consult the foreign-policy speeches of Richard Cobden and John Bright, whose analysis of Britain's attempt to manage the European balance of power are as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Then again, the power elite would have to have real people's interests at heart for this line of thinking to have any effect.

Top Israeli officials also say they wouldn’t expect an attack from a nuclear Iran. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoted defense minister Ehud Barak as saying:

The real threat to Zionism [from an Iranian bomb] is the dilution of quality. Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world. The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place, such a cutting-edge place in human society, education, culture, science, quality of life, that even American Jewish young people want to come here…. Our young people can consciously decide to go other places. Our best youngsters could stay out of here by choice.

So Israel might have to attack Iran not because Iran might attack Israel first, but rather because young people won’t want to live in the country otherwise. Outward migration from Israel exceeds inward migration. The country’s leaders fear that continued regional tension will accelerate this exodus. Has it occurred to them that young people might not like being citizens of an increasingly isolated occupier and apartheid state that exists in constant tension with its neighbors?

It may seem reasonable to the power elite that a military attack on Iran would create an atmosphere hospitable to young people looking for a better future. But if that’s what Israel’s rulers think, they need to open their eyes.