AUTHOR: Scott RITTER
Translated by Machetera
" Last week President Obama received a lesson in diplomatic dexterity when his secret proposal to waive the placement of the controversial missile defense system in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia's help in forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear program has been publicly rejected. The lesson? do not receive something for nothing, especially if what you want is already in itself, nothing.
; "> If the members of the Obama administration takes the trouble to go a bit 'down memory lane, remember that once there was a document called the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed in 1972 by the United States and the former Soviet Union, in which he acknowledged that the missile defense shield were inherently destabilizing, and as such should not be used. The ABM Treaty represented the landmark agreement on a series of agreements that later enacted the limitation of strategic weapons and the reduction of armaments. President Obama was 10 years old when he signed that treaty. It was 40 in December 2001 when President George W. Bush decided to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and set in motion a series of events that saw going to roll the question of arms control between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. plan, which involves placing a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic has meant that the Russians express its intention to scuttle the INF Treaty (the Treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces, which eliminated two classes of ballistic missile warhead Nuclear threatening Europe) and to place missiles SS-21 "Iskander" (characterized by an extreme degree of accuracy) in the range of the Polish-off site.
It was not the crisis in Russia to create the missile defense system. Were the States United, which therefore can not expect to receive a credit immediate diplomatic when putting on the table this controversial program of foreign policy as if it were a legitimate bargaining chip in negotiations.
Russia has always rightly said that any defense system located in Eastern Europe could only be directed against Russia. While Obama and Bush administrations have always denied that it was so, Poland has effectively admitted to not fear any of those missiles to Iran, but Moscow. The sop that the U.S. offer to Poland in exchange for the loss of the missile shield is made of advanced ground-to-air Patriot missiles, which of course would not be the target missile Persians, who are unable to reach the Polish soil, but the Russian Aviation and Missile obviously can not.
There are three basic facts of the Obama administration must deal with, which so far has not done.
First, the missile defense systems are inherently destabilizing and contribute only to the acquisition of offensive measures designed to overcome those defenses. Secondly, the rapid expansion of NATO in the past decade has in fact threatened Russia. Finally, the "threat" missiles to Europe has always been illusory.
The U.S. plan for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe was based from the outset on a concept deeply flawed. Although we use technology not checked, it was sold as a tool to protect Europe from a nonexistent threat (Iranian missiles), while creating the conditions for Europe to show a real threat that the missile defense shield was unable to defeat (Russian missiles). The fact that Obama has put on the plate to end the missile shield a "grand bargain" with Russia on Iran, which does very little to stress the value of that system. It is an absolute zero, both in terms of military and diplomatic than that. Obama, making it a bargaining chip, he tried to give it the value that was missing, and the Russians are not fooled.
The Iranian situation is all too real, but not in terms of the dangers posed by Iran is doing anything. The U.S. has not helped matters by exaggerating the threat posed by nonexistent Iranian missiles targeted on non-existent and armed with nuclear warheads. Russia has expressed a desire to cooperate with the United States to improve monitoring of Iran's uranium enrichment, which Iran is the second according to the International Atomic Energy Agency is part of a peaceful nuclear energy. To believe the "deal" proposed by Obama, Russia would also have to believe the threat of nuclear and missile programs in Iran. And do not believe it.
Obama would do well to call his team to the national security and expose them to the intelligence used to assess the threat from Iran. A document of this kind must exist, as the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and the president himself have all repeatedly referred to the "threat" posed by Iran's ambitions to possess "nuclear weapons". It is important to distinguish between what we know and what we think we know. For example, we know that Iran has enriched uranium necessary to produce such a nuclear weapon. Ask Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence. That's what he said this week the Senate Armed Services Committee of the United States in his testimony on Iran. Yet many in the U.S. intelligence community continues to state unequivocally that Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon.
Obama should take each statement on Iran's nuclear ambitions and then carefully remove all of the factual basis on which that statement. If it did, soon discovers that he and his advisers know less than you think of Iran. All the arguments of the United States against Iran are based on assumptions and speculations. If the president dismantle these speculations, find that what holds them together is a methodology that is more ideologically motivated to justify a policy of containment and destabilization of the Iranian theocracy to understand that its nuclear ambitions.
reassuring conclusions of the CIA report on Soviet strategic capabilities contrary, the proponents of U.S. defense programs, programs on the basis of that relationship was not warranted. These ideologues, rather than addressing the facts presented by the CIA document, attacked the methodology used for the assessment. Conservatives who opposed the policy of detente did political pressure on President Ford for preparing a "B Team" of analysts (external) to counter the conclusions expressed in the CIA document from the "Team A" (consisting of CIA personnel). "Team B" did not provide better data (indeed, each of its allegations were proved wrong), but was more effective in producing fear. His claims about Soviet intentions and capabilities, highly exaggerated and inaccurate, were politically explosive and could not be ignored, especially in 1976, presidential election year. "Team B" defeated "Team A", and laid the basis not only for the dismantling of the U.S. policy of detente with Russia, but also the largest arms race in modern history, which culminated in the destruction of the pacts designed to contain such an escalation.
Obama should study the history of "Team B" because the "Team B" is still at work, and disseminating fantasies about the "threat" Iran's reminiscent of those used by the team that managed to pass off the fable of the "threat" Soviet. The new president has had a critical attitude towards the war in Iraq, and the sad story of deception and misinformation that was then called "intelligence failure". There was no "failure" because there was no "intelligence". "Team B" does not provide any sort of intelligence, but rather ideological statements that serve to justify a pipeline. The same methods of "Team B" which gave us the information on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq today are working with the data of "intelligence" on Iran and used by President Obama his national security team.
Obama would be surprised to discover that one of the programs proposed by the "Team B" in his attack against the truth was a missile shield to counter the perception of a Soviet missile threat. The inventions and falsehoods peddled by the "Team B" in the seventies put America on the path of withdrawal from the ABM Treaty of 2001 and that same missile defense plan that Obama is now using as a bargaining chip to persuade Russia to cooperate the "threat" of Iran, a threat also packed with the same "Team B".
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;"> Many were affected by the Secretary of State when he said that America should embrace the "smart power [intelligent power, the synthesis of hard and soft power , or military force and diplomacy, NdT]. He meant that the United States, under President Obama would use all means at their disposal, especially diplomacy, to try to solve the myriad problems that face anywhere in the post-Bush, including that of Iran. But you can not begin to solve a problem without first defining it carefully, because without that defining the "solution" would not solve anything. A solution to the Iranian problem must begin with an accurate intelligence picture of what is happening today in the country, a framework that is based on facts rather than on fiction based on ideology. We recommend Obama to question all the intelligence the United States used to define Iran as a threat, and to settle once and for all the remains of the "Team B" that remain in the structure of U.S. intelligence. Intelligence is not listen to what you want to hear, but knowing what you need to know.
, "> Obama should know the truth about Iran and the missile defense system in Europe. This truth may be uncomfortable, but it would enable them to develop meaningful solutions to serious problems and avoid repeating the embarrassing "grand bargain" proposal to Russia, namely, to exchange anything with nothing in their efforts to secure something for nothing. There are many zero-sum in that equation, and this pretty well sums up the current political strategy of Obama's relations with Russia and Iran.
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;"> Original: Barack Obama, Meet Team B
Original article posted on 12/3/2009
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