Fallout from Obama’s Nuclear Summit
President Obama’s announcement that the American people will be “safer and more secure,” as a result of the nuclear summit held in Washington D.C over the past week, is akin to a triumphant declaration that the barn door has been successfully slammed shut, even while Mrs. O’Leary’s cow ambles merrily past us.
Four countries (Chile, Ukraine, South Africa, and Mexico) have stated they are planning to relinquish their fissile material. Canada has also pledged to return some nuclear material to the United States, thus ending the (non-existent) threat of nuclear attack from our neighbors to the North.
Much hay was made of the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not attend the summit although neither did U.S Allies including Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the U.K, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd or the Saudi King Abdullah. The Israelis did send Minister Dan Meridor, the deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy. In other words, the Israeli sent the sort of envoy you want when you are doing serious business on terrorism and nuclear weapons. However, the Israelis were nearly alone in trying to focus attention on Iran. The United States however, for the most part avoided the subject of rogue states like Iran and North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapon, U.S Officials tell the Wall Street Journal. Why?
U.S. officials say they avoided these touchy subjects to ensure that all countries came on board. China might be annoyed by raising such state-sponsored proliferation, goes the argument, and in any case that’s being pursued at the U.N.
At a conference on nuclear terrorism, highly trumpeted by the Obama Administration, the U.S avoided mentioning the one country which has more terror ties than any other and is actively pursuing nuclear weapons.
I feel safer already.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials have been mooing at anyone who will listen, to let the world know that their nuclear progress is well past the metaphorical barn door. Behzad Soltani, Deputy Head of Research for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization says Iran will enter the nuclear club within the month, claiming that such membership will deter “any attack,” against Iran.
Deter Attack? At this point the Iranians are not even likely to face serious unilateral, let alone international, sanctions. According to a New York Times article published this week, the Obama Administration’s idea of “crippling sanctions” against Iran have devolved into a mere slap on the wrist. Instead of determining what sanctions would be necessary to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability and then working to implement them, they are seeking to lowering their requirements to try to insure consensus with nations such as Russia and China, even if the end product will be ineffectual. This is national security policy by way of the lowest common denominator.
Meanwhile, the Iran Refined Petroleum Act, which would institute tough sanctions, languishes in bureaucratic limbo at the behest of the White House, according to Capitol Hill scuttlebutt. This isn’t the first time the White House has been linked to trying to slow congressional action on sanctions either. Sanctions, President Obama asserts, “offer no guarantees.”
Far from being bizarre, the nuclear summit’s focus on securing uranium from non-threatening countries like Canada instead of Iran, seems to be perfectly in line with Obama Administration policy. Obama’s new Nuclear Posture Review declares that signatories in compliance with the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty will be free of any nuclear retaliation from the United States even if utilizing chemical or biological weapons against us. And President Obama didn’t hesitate to point out that Israel is not a NPT signatory (Iran however is, although non-compliant.)
The problem with Obama’s nuclear policy, like much of the rest of the administration’s foreign policy, is its steadfast refusal to recognize that not all countries can be treated the same. They repeatedly assert that there is no difference between nuclear material in the hands of the Iranians or the Canadians. Or between the democracy of the United States and that of Kazakhstan. It is this mindset which enables the President to utter statements such as ,”Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.” It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama does NOT like it, and hopes to change it.
The desire not to use crippling sanctions against Iran is part and parcel to this. This administration’s “soft power” of diplomacy and summits, is highly effective in evoking the desired response from representative and peace-loving governments like those of Canada, Chile and even Israel. It’s a policy culminating in “making the world safe FROM democracy,” to rephrase another progressive President, Woodrow Wilson. Yet when it comes to apocalyptic mullahs and radical Islamists who care not a whit for “soft power,” this administration finds itself utterly tongue-tied, and simply doubles-down on pressuring its friends who live far closer to the range of nuclear fallout.