State Dept Dumps Career Weapons Experts

Knight Ridder reports that the State Department is dumping or passing over career Foreign Service and Civil Service weapons experts to hire or promote outsiders who are loyal to the Bush Administration. It appears that at least some of the problems are left over from (now UN Ambassador) John Bolton's reign over arms control policy at State. One of Condi Rice's best moves was to get him out of the State building, but apparently he left some problems behind for a "realist" foreign policy.

Actually, such personnel shake-ups are not unusual. I left the Foreign Service partly because Clinton and Gore wanted to shrink the government payroll any way they could, and pressured people like me, working on non-proliferation issues, to leave. (Remember those good old days when the President actually worried about how much money the government was spending.) Another reason I left was that the Republicans in Congress were blocking US implementation of its nuclear agreement with North Korea through KEDO. My job as the senior diplomatic working on scientific issues at the American Embassy in Rome turned out to require a lot of time begging Italy and other European countries to donate money to makeup for American shortfalls in funding KEDO because Republicans in Congress didn't like it. I thought the US should live up to its treaty obligations.

Also, the personnel issues are not unusual. When I worked for then-Assistant Secretary Richard Clarke (of 9/11 fame) in State's old Politico-Military bureau during the Bush I administration, I got promoted while I was assigned there, based on my performance in my previous job in Brasilia, Brazil. Clarke did not want me to have a supervisory position in his bureau, although my new rank required it. To Clarke's credit, his opposition was not political. He wanted someone who was a more aggressive bureaucratic infighter than I was. Nevertheless, he finally agreed (grudgingly) to allow me to hold a supervisory position on missile proliferation matters.

Data Mining after NSA Phone Surveillance?

This Christian Science Monitor story on data mining outlines the latest threat to individual privacy from the government, following the furor over NSA's monitoring of telephone calls. Of course, this is only what the government is doing. Corporations are already deep into data mining, mainly to figure out what we like and how to sell us stuff, but it could get more nefarious.

No War on Terror

A war means millions of people in uniform from one country fighting millions of others in uniform from another country. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were carried out by about 20 people, and even if one counts all the people trained with them in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden, there are only a few thousand more. There are, of course, wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US invaded with thousands of uniformed troops, and where troops in uniform continue to fight.

Although the attack on the WTC and Pentagon was not the beginning of a war on terror, the Bush administration used it as a basis for starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cynically, they decided that going to war was the way to get re-elected, that the American people would not throw out a president who was leading a war. But it wasn’t a war. 9/11 was a terrorist attack by a handful of people from various countries that was wildly successful beyond their expectations. The lack of attacks on the US is not due to great defense by the Bush administration but rather to the lack of military force on the enemy’s side. Bush showed his true colors by failing to prevent the 9/11 attack not by “preventing” subsequent attacks, which would likely not have occurred in any case.

The American invasion of Iraq was not to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction or to bring democracy to Iraq, but rather to get George W. Bush re-elected. If he had not invaded Iraq, he would not have had much of a “war” on terrorism. Iraq made it a real war, not a fake war, albeit not a war on terrorism.

Where Is Yasser Arafat When You Need Him?

Everyone claims to be surprised by Hamas’ victory in Palestine. What happened? One thing is that Yasser Arafat is gone from the scene. If Yasser Arafat had still been around he may well have been able to orchestrate the politics to produce a Fatah victory. Arafat was a cagy political operator, both on the international and domestic stages. The Israelis couldn’t wait to get rid of Arafat, but it may be another case of be careful what you wish for. Is Israel going to be happier with the Palestinians under the rule of Hamas rather than Arafat?

All indications are that Mahmoud Abbas was selected by the US and Israel to succeed Arafat, because he was a moderate who allowed himself to be influenced by Washington and Tel Aviv (or Jerusalem). But that was certainly part of Fatah's problem; Abbas' appeal to the US and Israel was anathema to Palestinians. So now, what will his relationship be with Hamas? Nobody seems to know. It seems likely that things will get worse before they get better, in part at least because of Sharon’s departure from the scene, in part because of the way Washington and Israel have played their hands. The Europeans, who have been more balanced between Israel and the Palestinians, may be able to play a more constructive role now that American Middle Eastern policy has failed.

Israel, of course, is one of the main problems in dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem. Israel's nuclear arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons is a driving force behind Iran's (and earlier, Pakistan's) desire for its own nukes. If things continue to deteriorate, maybe Israel will finally get to use some of them. The good news is that Israel will not use its nukes without strong provocation, because it sees them as the ace in the hole to protect the entire Jewish race if it is ever again threatened by something like the Holocaust. The question is: how closely does Israel see its future linked to the future of the entire Jewish race?