The Boston Globe today reported that the US is ramping up arms sales to the Gulf region of the Middle East in an attempt to create stronger buffers against Iran. At the same time, the Bush Administration is trying to clamp down on arms sales to countries around the world. (Why, oh why does this always happen this way? Isn't anyone in this Admin aware of the word 'irony' or the word 'hypocrisy'? Sigh!)
Anyway, here is an excerpt from the Globe article:
The current arms sale proposals grew out of a
diplomatic effort launched last May called the "Gulf Security Dialogue," in which US officials sought to suggest ways to bolster the defenses of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman.
Not every country opted to buy a new weapons system, Mull said. Some asked for other kinds of assistance, such as improving port security and protecting key energy installations.
The talks produced a flurry of high-level meetings, including a recent delegation to Washington led by the crown prince of Bahrain. In May, Mull and his counterpart at the Defense Department, Mary Beth Long, will travel to Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to continue the security talks.
In recent weeks, State and Defense Department officials have begun visiting Capitol Hill to seek support for the arms sales. Congress has the power to block them. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, hopes to schedule classified briefings soon with members of the Senate and House International Relations committees.
The US government, which has military bases in Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain, has tried for years to persuade Gulf allies to purchase a regionwide early warning radar system to collect intelligence and instantaneously detect a missile attack. But efforts faltered as some Gulf countries argued that the systems were too expensive, and that possible attackers -- at that time, Iran and Iraq -- were not enough of a threat to warrant the systems .
More at:
http://tinyurl.com/25uodq Senator Kerry, in his capacity as Chair of the SFRC Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, was supposed to get two hearings in March that have both been postponed. They were both titled, Gulf Security Dialogue, and both had Nicholas Burns scheduled to appear. (Maybe to talk about this arms sale the Globe mentioned today? Could be, or it could just be a fabulous coincidence. I wonder what the good Senator thinks about this, but I would never ask, it's classified.)
http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2007/hrg070321p.htmlAnyway there was a hearing this morning in the Senate Banking committee on "Minimizing Potential Threats from Iran: Assessing the Effectiveness of Current US Sanctions on Iran." Nicholas Burns, a very sane representative of the State Dept (honest) testified as to the state of relations between Iran and the US. He was asked a variety of questions about US efforts at diplomacy (honest) and provided some welcome answers that indicate that the US is engaging with France, Germany, the Uk, China and Russia in renewed efforts to put pressure on Iran to stop their nuclear build-up. (There were odd answers as well. Sec. Levey was asked if the recent meeting that had the US and Iran sitting down at the same table had produced any efforts at direct talks between these two countries. Ah, no. Sigh! (At least none that could be testified to in an open hearing. Anyway, give this a look-see, if you get a chance.
http://banking.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=252Also, there was a must-read article in the NYTimes today about the resignation of Robert Joseph as undersecretary for arms control and international security. (This is the post John Bolton had before he had the interrum appointment as UN Ambassador.) Read between the lines on this about actual, honest-to-God change in Bush Admin policies. They are being dragged kicking and screaming into reality. (Yeah, I know, too little too late, but anything that points to a saner diplomatic effort at this point is good news.)
He is among the last of the hawks to turn off the lights and walk away from an administration that many conservatives say has lost its clarity of mission. He insists he is leaving without rancor and without regrets, including for his role in assessing the weapons intelligence about Iraq. “I do share the recognition that there was an intelligence failure, but it wasn’t just a failure of the Bush administration,” he said. “Look, if we press too hard we are accused of politicizing the intelligence; if we don’t press, then we are not doing our job.”
The departure of Mr. Joseph and others has been welcomed by officials, mostly in the State Department, who believe the administration’s hawks blocked opportunities for negotiated settlements. They have celebrated a distinct change in the tone and actions of the administration, now so enmeshed in Iraq that it has neither the time nor the appetite for the agenda to remake the world that dominated its first term. To the departed hawks, the administration has simply lost its moorings.
Some, like Mr. Joseph’s predecessor at the State Department, John R. Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations, have taken to the airwaves, denouncing the North Korea accord specifically, and what they view as a general drift toward compromise, a post-Iraq overemphasis on caution.
Others, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary; Paul D. Wolfowitz, Stephen A. Cambone and Douglas J. Feith, Mr. Rumsfeld’s former deputies; and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, have remained silent. Mr. Wolfowitz has used his position as president of the World Bank to turn to other issues; others are writing books or articles defending the use of intelligence or their role in the decision to invade Iraq.
Some hawks remain. Mr. Cheney is the most prominent, of course, and by all accounts he is as unyielding as ever in the administration’s internal debates. But his public statements are often more muted than before the Iraq war, when he argued that toppling Saddam Hussein would remake the Middle East.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washington/21hawks.html?pagewanted=print
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