Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?

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Topic:	Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus
User:	"Arnold Holbrook"
Date:	01 Jan 2004 08:52:42 AM
Object:	Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?

Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

ASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — Undoing a weapons program is one of the rarest of
decisions for an absolute leader.
After South Africa's apartheid government was replaced by black
majority rule, South Africa astonished the world by disclosing that it
had developed six nuclear weapons and then allowing the United Nations
nuclear inspections agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to
disarm it. That decision, in effect, was the result of a naturally
occurring "regime change."
Libya's important and welcome decision to abandon its unconventional
weapons programs is all the more interesting since the same government
that got Libya into the business of developing forbidden weapons has
now ordered the change of course.
But the larger issue is whether North Korea and Iran can be similarly
disarmed and, if so, how best to go about it.
Libya never got very far down the nuclear road and its weapons
programs were not enough of a worry to rate inclusion in the "axis of
evil" proclaimed by President Bush in his State of the Union speech in
2002. (Iraq, Iran and North Korea made the cut).
While Libya had acquired centrifuges on the black market, it had not
assembled them into a large-scale cascade for producing highly
enriched uranium. When it came to a nuclear arsenal, Libya was
abandoning a distant — but still dangerous — dream, not a real
ability.
North Korea and Iran are much tougher cases and ultimately a far more
important test of the Bush administration's efforts to roll back
weapon programs through a mixture of force and diplomacy, rather than
the more traditional reliance on weak international treaties and
policing.
American intelligence agents project that North Korea has already got
one or two nuclear weapons and the ability to expand this presumed
nuclear arsenal. Iran has also been working energetically toward
developing a nuclear weapons capacity, American intelligence says. It
remains to be seen if the signing this month of an agreement on
international inspections will eventually halt those efforts.
The turnabout by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — and the
secret British and American diplomacy that encouraged it — amount to
just one step on the road to stopping proliferation, and the question
is how to take the next ones.
From the start, the Bush team has said that Iraq was about more than
Iraq. The Bush administration began the year with an audacious
doctrine that held that removing Saddam Hussein from power would send
a cautionary message to weapons proliferators and help remake the
Middle East. As it heads into an election year, the Bush
administration has highlighted the role that American power may have
played in concentrating the Libyan leader's mind. Top Libyan
officials, by contrast, have pointed to economic considerations.
The possibility of ending decades of punishing economic sanctions
might indeed have led Colonel Qaddafi, who has ruled for 34 years and
wants to stay in power, to chart a new course even if the Iraq war had
not occurred.
Still, it may be that the American invasion of Iraq reinforced the
message that the pursuit of forbidden weapons did not strengthen his
government. The Reagan administration, after all, ordered Air Force
F-111's and Navy A-6's to bomb Libya in 1986 after concluding that
Libya was behind an attack on American servicemen in Europe.
There is no indication of a similar change of heart in North Korea,
where there are indications that Kim Jong Il has drawn a very
different lesson from the Iraq war. Having seen how the leader of Iraq
was transformed into a prisoner, North Korea appears to have concluded
that the best protection against an American intervention is a nuclear
arsenal, the bigger the better.
Instead of renouncing its nuclear program, North Korea has in the past
year advertised its supposed advances in making nuclear weapons. The
Bush administration has turned particularly to China — as well as to
Russia, South Korea and Japan — to try to advance diplomacy, but has
in effect found itself with little leverage.
Threatening military force is not an option. War on the heavily armed
Korean Peninsula would be a calamity. No Asian ally is prepared to
back a policy of confrontation. With most of the United States Army
preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States simply lacks
the military muscle to marshal a credible threat.
In talks, North Korea has proved to be frustrating and possibly
untrustworthy. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has oscillated
between a hard-line policy of waiting for North Korea's collapse to
trying to engage the North in bargaining.
If there is hope of replicating the Libyan reversal it may be in Iran.
First, Iran has not yet developed nuclear weapons. So it would be
giving up a prospective, and not actual, ability. Second, a diplomatic
process is already under way.
Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London and a former proliferation expert on
President Bill Clinton's National Security Council, notes that Iran
has responded to diplomatic pressure.
What is needed now is a permanent solution, one in which Iran will
permanently forgo efforts to produce nuclear weapons materials by
enriching uranium or producing plutonium.
European nations have offered Iran access to fuel supplies for a
peaceful nuclear program if it gives up its ambitions to develop
nuclear weapons.
"In the case of North Korea the Libya model is unrealistic," he said
in a telephone interview. "It is not plausible that the North Korean
regime, given their perception of the world, will give up their
missiles, chemical, biological and nuclear programs in exchange for
better relations. They view them as essential for their survivability.
The best you can do is to achieve limits." If there is a chance to
repeat the Libyan experience, he notes, "the test will come in Iran."
.

User: "Werewolfy"
Title: Re: Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?	01 Jan 2004 12:46:17 PM

(Arnold Holbrook) wrote in message news:<7e4bfa4a.0401010652.68ed42fb@posting.google.com>...

Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

ASHINGTON, Dec. 31 ? Undoing a weapons program is one of the rarest of
decisions for an absolute leader.

After South Africa's apartheid government was replaced by black
majority rule, ........etc etc etc etc.

================================================================================
From: Arnold Holbrook (

)
Subject: Are people reading my posts?

Are people reading my news posts, or am I wasting time?
Same answer.
Ricky
================================================================================
.

User: "Arnold Holbrook"
Title: Re: Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?	02 Jan 2004 09:10:49 AM

(Werewolfy) wrote in message news:<85ebfda0.0401011046.4455fe25@posting.google.com>...

arnold_holbrook@mailcity.com (Arnold Holbrook) wrote in message news:<7e4bfa4a.0401010652.68ed42fb@posting.google.com>...

================================================================================

From: Arnold Holbrook (arnold_holbrook@mailcity.com)
Subject: Are people reading my posts?

Are people reading my news posts, or am I wasting time?

Same answer.
Ricky

I get your point. Why are YOU wasting time? If they are boring, don't
bother opening them.

================================================================================

User: "Saint Isidore of Seville"
Title: Re: Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?	01 Jan 2004 03:34:51 PM

The Vatican!
The Psychedelick Pope
Saint Isidore of Seville
^Ö^ Patron Saint of the Internet ^Ö^
°°^Ö^ °°
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
All I want to do is WOMP WOMP!!!!!
.

User: "R. Foreman"
Title: Re: Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?	01 Jan 2004 05:49:25 PM

Keep up the posts, Arnold. Very interesting stuff.
arnold_holbrook@mailcity.com (Arnold Holbrook) Spat the Words

Giving Up Those Weapons: After Libya, Who Is Next?

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

ASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — Undoing a weapons program is one of the rarest of
decisions for an absolute leader.