Ron Smith: Politics and Policy

It has just been reported that President Obama has been engaged in extensive consultation with an independent foreign policy expert.  He is apparently contemplating making an important policy statement about the use of nuclear weapons.  Specifically, he proposes to address the issue of nuclear deterrence and the associated doctrine of ‘no-first-use’. 

Quite right, you might think.  President Obama has been much criticised for his reliance in these matters, on an inner circle of political appointees, who have not had the requisite expertise.  This has been the burden of much of the criticism from his three previous Secretaries of Defence.

Ron Smith: The Proper Treatment of Combatants

Commenting on the atrocious slaughter of the elderly parish priest of the church of St Etienne in Rouen, north of Paris, French President, Francois  Hollande, said, “It is a war”. There is nothing remarkable about that, we might think.  He, and others, have said that sort of thing before.  The question is, does he (and the others) really mean it?  Because, if he does, some interesting questions arise.   To begin with, what are we to say of Adel Kermiche and Abdelmalek Petitjean who were jointly responsible for cutting the throat of the 85 year-old priest and holding his congregation hostage?

Are they combatants in that war?

Ron Smith: Climate Change and the Imperial Wardrobe

In 1837 Danish writer, Hans Christian Anderson wrote a short tale for children called ‘The Emperor’s new clothes’.  In this a pair of enterprising weavers undertake to provide a magnificent new suit for his majesty, which will have the interesting characteristic of being quite invisible to those of his court who are ignorant, or incompetent, or otherwise, unfit for their position.  

The story is apparently based on a 14th century version of a myth that goes back to classic times.

Ron Smith: Postscript on Paris

What follows are comments on some of the issues raised in my 15 November posting (‘There is a war on’), which dealt with the ISIS attack on Paris.

Last Tuesday (17 November), there was a soccer match in Istanbul between Turkey and Greece.  Just before the kick-off an official call was made for a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in Paris, on the previous Friday.  It was greeted by whistling and shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is great’).  They were celebrating!

Ron Smith: There is a war on

There should be only one question on the lips of French citizens today and that is: are we really going to allow Islamic terrorists to continue to kill us without hindrance?  

If, as I suppose, the answer is ‘no’, then we should expect decisive action against ISIS by France and the other states which are similarly at threat.  If nothing else is plain, it must surely be beyond doubt that passive defence, which depends on security measures and intelligence-gathering, is not working, and neither is the pin-prick aerial assault on the Islamic state, itself, by various NATO and other forces.

Ron Smith: More People on Boats

As if to prove my point about the overlap between political activism and an ostensibly independent media (‘Boat People’, 30 June, 2015), we now have the story of a pair of Maori TV journalists, Ruwani Perera and Jacob Bryant, turning up on a protest boat in the Mediterranean.  Ostensibly, they are there to report but, in fact, they are part of an elaborate propaganda effort promoted by Kiaora Gaza, through Maori TV’s Native Affairs.  

As it happened, the story was already out, before the event was over. As recounted by Martyn Bradbury on his DailyBlog the ‘peace flotilla’ (actually reduced to one vessel by the end; three of the four having turned back) is ‘trying to break the violent and brutal blockade of Gaza’, and protest at a ‘great cultural genocide’.

Ron Smith: Boat People

We really need to decide what we want to do about refugees/immigrants, rather than making cheap points about every incident that occurs. This applies to political activists and the major media (not that there is a clear distinction between the two).

The first question concerns whether we wish to control the process or whether we are content to just let it happen.  Whatever, the history, or the particular claims, that individuals might present with, it seems to me that we would want to control the process, both in regards to numbers and individual characteristics.  This cannot be done if we simply wait until the persons concerned turn up on our shores, or appear in distress in our coastal waters (or even somewhere in our exclusive economic zone).

Ron Smith: Iraq deployment - second thoughts

In a blog I wrote mid-February (‘Fighting Islamist Extremism’), I argued that it was right for us to commit a small New Zealand training force to the war against ISIS.  There was continuing atrocity going on in ISIS-occupied Iraq and, as good international citizens (members of the Security Council, no less) we had an obligation to contribute to an international effort to resist what was, effectively, genocide.  I also spoke of a continuing obligation to traditional allies, although, even then, I expressed doubts about the commitment of some of the leading players.
 
Be that as it may, the fact is that the situation in the region has changed radically in the last six weeks.  To begin with, Iran has now intervened in the fighting in Iraq (around Tikrit), in support of Iraqi regular and irregular (militia) forces.  This throws up a number of questions, particularly since there have been reports of substantial atrocity by the Iraqi/Iranian forces.

Ron Smith: Iran - the End Game

Sometime in the next couple of weeks there will be an agreement announced at the end of more than 18 months of talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany).  

The crucial central question concerns the extent to which Iran will be permitted to retain its on-going nuclear weapons programme.  How much will it retain of its uranium enrichment capability (and stockpile of enriched material) from which it could make weapons of the sort that fell on Hiroshima?  And to what extent will it be allowed to continue with its programme to produce weapons-grade plutonium (the basis of the bomb that fell on Nagasaki)?

Ron Smith: Fighting Islamist Extremism

Has the war on Islamic extremism got anything to do with us?  Specifically, should we contribute to any military action against the so-called Islamic State and its outliers?  

This, of course, is a multi-faceted question.  What are the grounds that might justify such intervention?  What contribution could we actually make?  What are the prospects for success for the operation that is presently envisaged?

Ron Smith: Holocaust Revisited

In recent days the world has been remembering the holocaust.  Quite right, too!  We should recall to mind atrocity on this scale, and ask ourselves what, if anything, could have been done to prevent it.  

Whatever conclusions we come to on this point, we need also to ask whether it could happen again, and if it could, what we would need to do to make sure it doesn’t.  In a broader sense, I am talking about industrial-scale genocide/ethnic cleansing of whatever kind but I am also thinking specifically of the possibility of a second Jewish holocaust on broadly the same scale as the first.

Ron Smith: Scholarship and the 'end of days'

Over all of the last week, the airwaves and print media have been telling us that humanity faces an unprecedented challenge due to the increasing use of fossil-fuels.  The carbon dioxide produced by these carbon-containing materials is progressively accumulating in the atmosphere, where it causes the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’.  The inescapable consequence of this is destructive sea-level rise, an increasing incidence of weather calamities (hurricanes and floods), and particularly a rapid increase in average global temperatures.  

All this from the Secretary General of the United Nations, an internationally-celebrated railway engineer (Dr Pachauri), and numerous experts from home and abroad.  Interestingly, these experts did not include anybody who had any contrary opinion on the thesis as a whole, or on any particular claim.

The crucial question to ask about this most recent spate of claims about imminent climatic disaster is whether it is to be taken as an essentially scientific claim about how things are, or, rather, whether it simply reflects an essentially middle-class liberal unease, about the consequences of human civilisation on the global environment, which has coalesced into a political movement. 

Ron Smith: Tania Billingsley and the Vienna Convention

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations provides the essential conditions for diplomats to perform their function, ‘without fear of coercion or harassment by the host country’. At the heart of this is the notion of immunity from the laws of the host country, which applies both to the persons of accredited diplomats and to the official property of the accredited state. 

Since the principle was first accepted in 1815, at Vienna, it has had a remarkable degree of respect and observance, and in the most difficult of circumstances. That is why the occupation in 1979 of the American Embassy in Tehran, and the incarceration of American diplomats, by Iranian revolutionaries, was such a shock to the international community.

Ron Smith: On being 'fracked'

The London Times, quoting NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, reports that, “Russian agents are secretly working with environmental groups campaigning against fracking to try to maintain Europe’s dependence on gas imports from Moscow.

It should be no surprise to us.  This sort of manipulation of left-leaning activists was a characteristic and quite successful ploy during the Cold War period, when, for example, western anti-nuclear groups were exploited to protest against the dispositions of NATO forces in Europe in the 1980s.  The successful resistance to these pressures by (in particular) President Reagan and Prime-Minister Thatcher, led to the ultimate collapse of the ‘evil empire’ that was holding a substantial part of Eastern Europe in what then seemed perpetual political subservience.

Ron Smith: 'Don't bother me, I've got an election to win'

On 28 October, 2012, I wrote a blog entitled ‘Questions from Benghazi’, in which I commented on the terrorist attack on the US consulate in that city nearly two weeks earlier, which killed four US public servants, including the Ambassador.  On that occasion, I noted the major questions that were being asked at that time, regarding the inadequate security provisions for the Ambassador and the consulate building in which he was staying, and the lack of any military response, during the more than seven hours of the assault. 

In the weeks and months that followed, few answers were supplied (there was a presidential election going on) and fresh questions arose.

Ron Smith: Terrorists and Drones

It should have come as no surprise to us that a New Zealander has been killed in a drone attack in Yemen.  I wrote earlier about the citizens of New Zealand, Australia and other western countries joining Islamic fundamentalists in global jihad and possibly getting killed. 

More importantly, I wrote about such individuals coming back, trained and further motivated, to kill persons here, as in the case of the murder of Lee Rigby in London (‘Terrorism, propaganda and war’, June 2013).  We could take comfort from the fact that the individual concerned in this case will not return to carry on jihad.  We might also be gratified that our intelligence services knew where he was and what he was doing and would (hopefully) have alerted the relevant authorities had he returned.

Ron Smith: The Munich Moment

In a blog I wrote towards the end of the first year of his presidency (November, 2009), I asked the question, “Is Barak Obama destined to be the Neville Chamberlain of the Twenty-first century?”  It is now clear that the answer to this question is, “Yes!”  And Ukraine is his Czechoslovakia.  

On present trends and despite the huffing and puffing about ‘consequences’ and ‘lines being crossed’, it looks as if the world will acquiesce in Russia’s military occupation and annexation of Crimea.  I say ‘the world’ because Russia mustered precisely no votes in the Security Council debate on this matter beyond its own veto.

Ron Smith: Suicide warriors and the laws of war

What should we make of the offer by Japanese authorities of a collection of letters from WW2 Kamikaze pilots to the UNESCO World Heritage ‘Memory of the World’ document collection?  Unsurprisingly, the offer has not been well received by some of Japan’s WW2 adversaries, China describing it as a glorification of Japanese militarism.  

In view of China’s enormous losses in the 1930s and the 1940s, and present tensions between the respective states, this is hardly surprising.  But we still might ask whether this is an appropriate criterion to apply to the preservation of documents and artefacts, which might have historical, or legal/moral significance, in the matter of the way we view war.

Ron Smith: Prospects for Iran and the Joint Plan

The implementation of a joint plan of action between Iran and the P5+1 countries, concerning Iran’s nuclear programme, has now begun.  What are its prospects of success?  

Of course, there are two sides here.  The P5+1 group may be taken to be more or less agreed on the outcome they desire; which is (so they say) to eliminate any potential that Iran may have to develop nuclear weapons.  On the other side, it seems reasonable to assume that Iran will wish to retain as much as it can of the nuclear infrastructure that it has built up over nearly forty years, whilst conceding what it has to in order to reduce, or even eliminate, the sanctions burden that they have been under.

Ron Smith: Nuclear tit for tat

It looks as if the recent announcement (26 December) by the head of the Iranian atomic energy authority, that Iran will shortly begin to manufacture a new, improved design of uranium enrichment centrifuge is intended as a tit for tat response to the American congressional move to enhance sanctions on Iran whilst the Geneva discussions are proceeding.  

It especially looks like this, since the Iranian announcement is based on a motion before the Iranian parliament, supported, apparently, by nearly half of its membership.  Be that as it may, it is certainly necessary to ask ourselves what this development means, especially since the Iranian parliamentary motion is also advocating an increase in the present target level of enrichment from 20% to 60%.