Obama, Modi and MTCR

Indian Prime Minister Modi has made membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which I helped create, an issue in his meeting with Obama.  While the MTCR has gotten some Indian press play, it has not been an issue in the US press.  According to the Indian press, Obama supports Indian membership in both the MTCR and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).  Inida is not an ideal candidate for either group, since it maintains a nuclear weapons program.  I do not approve of the Bush II administration's decision to give India's nuclear weapons program a pass, rather than require India to adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as I said in commenting that Trump's proposal to allow Japan and South Korea to have nuclear weapons was not as bad as Bush's allowing India to have nuclear weapons.

Bush's decision and Obama's support for India are understandable in the global power context.  India, which used to be a Russian satellite, is now a rival to China.  We want to strengthen India as a counter to China's power, which is more threatening to the US.  Nevertheless, I am not convinced that this is the best way to do it.  India's argument is that it is a late-blooming nuclear power, and therefore should be treated like the older nuclear powers, the US, UK, Russia, etc., which have separate provisions in the NPT allowing them to keep their weapons.  I think this undermines the whole non-proliferation regime.  If we do this for India, once North Korea has a full fledged nuclear program, why shouldn't it be granted NPT nuclear status, just as India has?

This article from the Indian Express is a pretty good summary of where things stand.

http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/narendra-modi-us-visit-mtcr-nsg-obama-us-congress-2844186/

Here are some other recent articles about the MTCR:

https://in.rbth.com/economics/cooperation/2016/06/09/india-joins-mtcr-space-missile-cooperation-with-russia-easier_601593

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/when-celebrating-progress-on-nsg-and-mtcr-thank-manmohan-singh-and-the-indo-us-nuclear-deal/articleshow/52667827.cms

http://www.siasat.com/news/ficci-welcomes-indias-entry-mtcr-regime-hopes-membership-nsg-969566/

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/126768-Senator-blasts-Indian-membership-of-MTCR

http://www.digit.in/science-and-technology/india-usa-and-the-lucrative-defence-technology-at-hand-30586.html

http://www.prameyanews7.com/en/jun2016/national/25548/Beijing-isolated-but-NSG-race-set-for-photo-finish.htm

Bob Kerrey - War Criminal with a Medal of Honor

I believe that Roger Cohen intended his New York Times column on Bob Kerrey to be somewhat complementary of Kerrey as a man trying to make amends for his involvement in a wartime atrocity.  However, the impression it made on me was of his hatred for military veterans in general, and Vietnam veterans in particular.  In Cohen’s column Kerrey comes across as one of the most evil, depraved men on the face of the earth.  Nowhere does he mention that Kerrey was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.  The implication is that America awarded the medal to a vile monster, making America a vile, monstrous country.  Cohen’s hatred of America drips like venom from his column. 

I presume that while visiting Vietnam recently, Cohen and Kerrey had a deep, dark heart-to-heart discussion about the incident in which Kerrey’s Seal unit killed a number of women and children.  Cohen does not mention that one reason this happened was because the Vietcong hid among women and children to protect themselves.  The VC have no remorse for pushing women and children into the line of fire by hiding in their villages and homes.  Cohen sees the Vietcong freedom fighters as wonderful exemplars of the nobility of mankind. 

What particularly incensed me was Cohen’s last paragraph comparing Mohammad Ali’s resistance to the Vietnam War to Kerrey’s participation in it.  Cohen’s view is that Ali was the better of the two.  Ali beat people up for a living, often hurting his opponents, but he did it for lots of money.  Kerrey fought for his country; he made much less money as a Seal than Ali did as a boxer, but Cohen sees hurting people for money as a good thing, while killing people for your country is monstrously evil.  For Cohen, Ali made the world a better place, but it would have been better of Kerrey had never been born. 

As a Vietnam veteran I am so outraged, I can hardly write this.  But Cohen is where the the rest of the world is.  People who fought in Vietnam because they were drafted (as Ali almost was) or because they thought they were patriotic, were fools.  Their country will forever hate and revile them, with Cohen in the forefront of the haters.  

Cruz Is A Loser

If Ted Cruz is the best candidate the Republican Party can come up with, it is a failure as a political party.  Cruz represents a narrow base of very conservative, very religious, uneducated or intellectually uninterested voters.  In an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR, Cruz said that scientific evidence does not support global warming.  He would not directly answer the question of whether evolution is scientific fact.  A PBS summary said that he would mandate a balanced budget. Paul Krugman reported that Cruz wants to return to the gold standard, adding, “there’s no sign in current asset prices that investors see a significant chance of the catastrophe that would follow a return to gold.”  Cruz would repeal ObamaCare.  He would move toward a flat tax and abolish the IRS. 

Cruz must be a smart man.  He graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law.  He clerked for the Supreme Court.  How can he cling to ideas that are so out of touch with reality.  Apparently he uses his brilliant intellect to defend indefensible positions.  His arguments ring hollow to many, but his devotees accept them.  This is true of many Republicans.  Wisconsin looks like an intelligent state, but it has elected Scott Walker as governor and Paul Ryan as a congressman, despite the fact that they adhere to many of the non-fact-based ideas that Cruz espouses.  As Speaker, Paul Ryan is considered somewhat of a moderate, although his ideas are well out on the political fringe compared to Republican ideas for the last hundred years. 

While Cruz is terrible, my poster child for what’s wrong with the Republican Party is Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader.  I see his policies in the Senate as unabashed hatred of the United States.  If the government won’t do what he wants it to do, he will tie it up and choke it to death, by cutting of funding, blocking appointments, blocking legislation, etc.  He throws sand into the gears of government so that it cannot operate.  But the United States cannot exist without some government.  One of the main results of his intransigence has been the prolonged slow growth of the economy.  If we could have funded some infrastructure projects, we could have created jobs much faster than we did.  As it is, we are approaching full employment, but American infrastructure is deteriorating badly.  Mitch McConnell doesn’t care if your bridge falls down, your passenger train goes off the tracks, or your flight runs into another one on the ground because of inability to monitor taxiways.  He would fund some things, like the military, particularly military hardware, but not if it means funding things like education or pollution control. 

The Republican Party had a chance to bring itself into the 21^st century this election, but chose not to.  As it did four years ago, it had public debates that included a number of total losers with no qualifications to be President.  If they don’t like Donald Trump, they have no one to blame but themselves.  The idea that in order to stop Trump they have crowned Cruz as the man who represents the very best of the Republican Party is moronic.  Everybody knows that his fellow Senators hate him.  Like McConnell he is ready to destroy the government if he doesn’t get his way.  If American schools insist on teaching evolution, he may abolish public schools.  Every child will be on his own to learn wherever he can. 

Compared to Cruz, Mitt Romney looks like a liberal philosopher and a master politician.  How can there be no competent CEOs (that leaves out Carly Fiorina) who are willing to be President?  This is essentially how Donald Trump puts himself forward.  Republicans have been less inclined to talk about his management skills than his personality, which they hate.  The country could use a good manager; if they don’t like Trump, find one.  It’s not Cruz or Kasich. 

One problem is that the President’s salary is a pittance compared to what CEOs make.  But thay also have no interest in governing, like Mitch McConnell.  They are motivated solely by avarice and greed, and violate either the letter or spirit of every law they can to enrich themselves without going to jail.  If America were destroyed by a nuclear war, J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon would be on a plane leaving the country before the bombs hit, and would set up shop in London or Hong Kong, making money off of the war and never shedding a tear for the millions of Americans who died.  He and his follow CEOs represent the nadir of humanity, the darkest depths to which mankind has sunk in the 21^st century.  There are no Republican leaders to be found there. 

In the old days, the military often was a source of national leaders, but after Vietnam, the military has fallen into such disrepute that it cannot attract high caliber people to its ranks.  No one who graduated from Harvard or Stanford would think of making a career in the military.  The military has some good people, but they are not of the first quality. 

Trump on Nuclear Proliferation

Everybody is making fun of Donald Trump for suggesting that perhaps Japan and South Korea should be allowed to develop their own nuclear weapons to defend themselves from North Korea.  Most of this criticism is just more ignorance.  Obama is not ignorant, but he has to campaign for Hillary, and so he just allows himself to look stupid in order to defend her. 

George W. Bush has already done something much worse than what Trump has proposed.  In 2005 the US signed an agreement with India that allowed India to develop its own nuclear weapons, despite a history of decades of international pressure on India not to do so.  The US agreed to accept Indian nuclear weapons despite its proximity to Pakistan and China, both of which it has fought wars with in recent history.  Pakistan is as unstable and dangerous a nuclear neighbor as North Korea, and Pakistan has many more nuclear weapons.  Japan is certainly more reliable as an ally than India, and South Korea probably is, too.  In addition, the US undoubtedly knows that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which it openly accepts.  Of course Israel denies it has them, but this denial is universally regarded as a lie, or at best a thinly veiled fiction.  The US accepts Israel’s nuclear weapons because of the enormous political influence of Jews in America, particularly the AIPAC lobby.  Japan certainly has a more reliable, responsible, stable government than Israel.  I don’t think any leader of Japan has publicly humiliated the President of the United States as Netanyahu did to Obama. 

Under the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement negotiated by Bush, which could be a model for the arrangements proposed by Trump, India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and to place its civil facilities under IAEA safeguards.  The US had to pass a new law in 2008 to allow nuclear cooperation with a state that had nuclear weapons and was not one of the five existing nuclear states recognized when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968.  Ambassador Nicholas Burns, who negotiated the India agreement, should speak out in favor of Trump’s proposal.  According to Wikipedia, opponents of the India deal argued that “it gave India too much leeway in determining which facilities were to be safeguarded and that it effectively rewarded India for continuously refusing to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”   One of the arguments for the deal is that it will enable India to build up its nuclear arsenal so that it will be better able to fight a nuclear war with China.  This argument would clearly apply to any other nation that is threatened by a nuclear neighbor, including Japan and South Korea. 

Both Japan and South Korea are signatories of the NPT and have been much more responsible states in the nuclear field than India.  Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that negotiations with Japan and South Korea on this issue would be much more favorable to the US, the non-proliferation regime, and international peace and stability than the US-India agreement negotiated by Bush.  Trump is more responsible on the nuclear non-proliferation issue than Bush was. 

I do not favor giving Japan and South Korea nuclear arms.  I think the current arrangement is better for world peace and stability.  The commentariat’s condemnation of Trump’s idea without mentioning Bush’s negotiation of the India deal and the US Congress’ approval of it illustrates their same lack of understanding of the nuclear arms race that they accuse Trump of.  Trump’s idea is not ridiculous; it builds on the work of previous Republican administrations.