Page 2 of 2 Iran and the crisis of
disarmament By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
countries to "go nuclear", as
predicted by Blix and other nuclear experts who
call this a case of self-fulfilling prophecy?
It is worth remembering that Kissinger
played a leading role in torpedoing the last best
chance the world has seen on disarmament - when US
president Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart
Mikhail Gorbachev agreed at the Reykjavik summit
in October 1986 to dismantle all their strategic
nuclear warheads. Kissinger blasted that impending
deal as contrary to the United
States' security interests and
"ability to provide deterrent protection for our
allies".
The same Kissinger now writes
like a born-again believer in disarmament,
exhorting world leaders to push for a "world
without nuclear weapons", without, however,
putting any meaningful spine in this by critiquing
such concrete nuclear policies as "smart,
tactical" nuclear weapons being deemed usable in
conventional warfare.
But of course, the
world is used to Kissinger's sophistry and double
talk, long ago aptly lampooned in Stanley
Kubrick's classic movie Dr Strangelove.
Pity he still has a compliant mass audience and
faithful disciples on US prime-time TV programs,
whose hosts almost never question him on his
contradictory record on disarmament.
Germany's potential leading role After Angela Merkel's latest visit to the
White House, there is a painful rumor in
circulation that Germany's chancellor has
consigned her country's overall foreign policy to
the United States' global and Middle East
policies. Merkel has seconded Bush's push to halt
Iran's nuclear program, albeit by emphasizing the
need to give diplomacy a decent chance, and she
reportedly favors the Iraq Study Group's linkage
approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The
necessity of repudiating the big powers' nuclear
doctrine, by adopting China's example of no first
use of nuclear weapons, together with serious
initiatives toward disarmament, now compellingly
presses itself against Germany's first female
chancellor, and she cannot afford to miss this
opportunity in light of Germany's prominent role
this year as the chair of the European Union and
president of the Group of Eight.
In light
of the complex, evolving nature of the EU's
foreign policy, which in some instances trumps the
foreign policy of individual EU member states, the
stage is now set to take a giant leap forward by
zeroing in on disarmament. Should Merkel prove
resolute in her adherence to disarmament goals,
she can then bring the EU's weight to bear on the
nuclear doctrines and policies of France and
United Kingdom, thus exercising de facto veto
power at the Security Council.
Notwithstanding the nuclear feudalism at
the council, resistant to shackling its privileged
permanent members, Merkel is now uniquely
positioned to influence the upcoming elections in
France and the UK, since the nuclear warriors
Chirac and Blair will leave office in the near
future. By formulating a new, invigorated European
approach toward disarmament that would be a
transcript of the common conscience, Merkel can
almost single-handedly set the standards for a new
global nuclear policy that would confirm the
ascension of Germany as a global power proper for
the new millennium.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After
Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy
(Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating
Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World
Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with
Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's
nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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