US Wants Changes to Non-Proliferation Regime

The NYT reported on March 15 on President Bush's efforts to modify the current nuclear non-proliferation regime. He would not change the language of the treaty, but would change how it operates. This is either timely or untimely, depending on how the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference goes in May. An NPT Review Conference is held every five years according to the terms of the treaty.

In essence Bush's plan would bar any country from making nuclear fuel that doesn't already make it, i.e., major world powers, although it might also exempt the backdoor nuclear powers, Israel, India and Pakistan, who are not signatories of the NPT. The article quoted the President's statement on March 7 regarding the NPT Review Conference:

We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the NPT's fundamental role in strengthening international security. We must therefore close the loopholes that allow states to produce nuclear materials that can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs.

The question is whether NPT signatories will accept this change in interpretation. I doubt it. As is so often said, nations do what is in their self interest. The NPT looks the way it does, because it had to deal with a lot of trade-offs to gain acceptance, and it has gained wide acceptance -- 189 signers. Bush says he is concerned about countries that might legally develop low enrichment fuel cycles for power reactors under the treaty, and then withdraw from the treaty and use their facilities to produce high enriched uranium for bombs, as the US claims North Korea has. One problem is that we don't have good intelligence that North Korea has done this. The person who probably knows the most about it is A.Q. Khan in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government will not let us talk to him. We know he sold them some erichment equipment, but what exactly did North Korea do with it. It doesn't help that we apparently lied to a number of countries, claiming that North Korea sold uranium to Libya, when in fact it was Pakistan that sold the uranium to them.

Bush and company say the NPT is useless as it is, because it won't permanently prevent bad countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. But that is probably too much to ask of it. It currently serves to slow down bad countries, forces them to open up their activities to IAEA inspectors, and in the worse case, it provides a trip-wire when a country like North Korea withdraws from the treaty, thereby saying publicly that it intends to develop nuclear weapons.

What the non-proliferation regime really needs, rather than a re-interpretation of the NPT is a way to deal with the new nuclear powers that are not members of the NPT: Israel, India and Pakistan. If Iran sees that Israel has the bomb and nobody cares, why shouldn't Iran decide that it should have the bomb, too. We need to show that we care about what happened within the non-proliferation regime that allowed these countries to develop nuclear weapons. For the US to sell F-16s to Pakistan without demanding anything in return on the nuclear side sets a very bad example. Pakistan may be helping on the terrorism issue, but in the long term, the nuclear issue may be more important, especially if terrorists get nuclear weapons.

Bush implicitly says the Pakistanis are moral giants when it comes to nuclear activities and deserve F-16s, while the Iranians are despicable devils. President Bush claims to love some Iranians, apparently the faceless men and women in the street who are believed to be struggling to overthrow the government of the mullahs. However, Bush hates the Iranians he knows, the men running the Iranian government. Nevertheless, he wants them to trust him to supply them with nuclear fuel, to provide the energy to run the country of Iran, its factories, its homes, its military facilities, one of whose missions is no doubt to repulse an American invasion like the one against their next door neighbor, Iraq. Bush's reply to this argument is that Iran doesn't need nuclear power, because it has all that oil. But currently, although Bush says "trust me" to sell Iran nuclear fuel for its reactors, if I were Iran, I wouldn't trust him. It's lack of such mutual trust that makes the NPT look like it does. Smaller countries like Iran also follow President Reagan's dictum: "Trust but verify."

We've already been down this road with Brazil, 30 years ago, when we sold Brazil and Westinghouse reactor, and then refused to sell the fuel for it. Brazil ended up buying, or trying its best to buy, a complete uranium fuel cycle from Germany.

World War II History Keeps Changing

Serge Schmemann misses one major change in attitudes toward World War II in his NYT op-ed on the war's 60th anniversary. He talks about the Baltic states stiffing (Estonia and Lithuania) or meeting (Latvia) Russia, China bashing Japan, Germany's desire to be included, but the only mention of the Holocaust is remembering that the Baltic states and Bulgaria cooperated with Germany in massacring Jews.

Jews have turned against the "greatest generation" that fought for American in World War II because the Allies did not move quickly enough to save Jews in European death camps. I believe that this is why we now have a World War II memorial on the mall. The World War II vets thought they didn't need a memorial because their deeds would be enough to speak to history for them. Now they find that defeating the Germans and the Japanese was not enough. They are condemned for not stopping the Holocaust. So, at least they have their memorial on the mall, but their reputations tarnish by the day under the attack of the Holocaust promoters.

Schmemann missed, or failed to mention, that change in perception toward World War II. Now thanks to endless public promotion, deaths in the Holocaust are perceived as much more important than deaths in combat. Rows of marble tombstones in military cemeteries here and abroad are now less important than images of Auschwitz. Few outside Russia mention that millions more Soviet citizens died in combat or were killed in their homes than the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust during the war.

Former Yukos Executive Criticizes Putin

Leonid Nevzlin, an associate of Yukos Oil Company chief Michail Khordorkovsky, spoke out in Israel about the Kremlin campaign against Yukos (NYT, March 21, p. A6). Khordorkovsky, currently in prison in Russia, is one of the mostly Jewish "oligarchs" who ended up with much of Russia's wealth after the privatization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The article said that Nevzlin fled to Israel nearly two years ago. It added that Israel has ignored an outstanding Interpol request from Russia to extradite Nevzlin. A British judge also rejected Russian extradition of a Yukos accountant and lawyer who fled to London.

According to the article, Nevzlin said there was "an element of anti-Semitism behind the Kremlin's campaign against him and other Yukos executives, some of whom are also Jewish. He joined a number of prominent Russian billionaires who have either fled to or established dual citizenship in Israel, including Vladimir Gusinsky, now a media tycoon."

Tom Friedman Attacks Torture

Tom Friedman criticized the US for its failure to adhere to civilized standards of war in an excellent Op-Ed on March 24. He quotes from Washington's Crossing about how George Washington treated prisoners of war during the Revolutionary War. Friedman says, drawing or quoting from the book:

"Washington ordered that Hessian captives would be treated as human beings with the same rights of humanity for which Americans were striving. The Hessians ... were amazed to be treated with decency and even kindness. At first they could not understand it." The same policy was extended to British prisoners.

In concluding his book, Mr. Fischer wrote lines that President Bush would do well to ponder: George Washington and the American soldiers and civilians fighting alongside him in the New Jersey campaign not only reversed the momentum of a bitter war, but they did so by choosing "a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution. They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them."