World Media Watch for September 25, 2002

BUZZFLASH NOTE: Once again, these are the views and perspectives of the individual papers, not of BuzzFlash or Gloria. They offer BuzzFlash readers a way of reading what other nations are saying about the crisis, whether we like it or not. We repeat: This is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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1//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia-COMMENT: BLAIR DOSSIER LACKS PROOF BUT THE PUBLIC APPEARS SOLD ON IT (Instant TV polls showed public support for action against Iraq rising on the strength of Blair's dossier and his confident performance in Parliament... Many MPs will remain unconvinced that Saddam must be deposed now or that he is a real and immediate threat. But many more are ready to go along with Blair and, while his dossier may fall short of some expectations, it will not lose him that support - nor stall the momentum for regime change.)

2//The Independent, UK--DESIGNED TO KEEP HAWKS AND DOVES HAPPY (The Prime Minister is adopting a twin-track strategy. He has persuaded President Bush to go an extra mile down the United Nations road. "He is under close management," boasted one Blair aide. At the same time, Mr Blair believes that military options must be considered now in case the UN fails to resolve the crisis...Although Mr Blair is winning his various battles, there are plenty more ahead and the question remains: would he really be leading the international charge against President Saddam now if George Bush had not gained his wafer-thin victory over Al Gore?)

3//Arabia.com, Saudi Arabia--KURDS AGREE ON DRAFT CONSTITUTION FOR ARAB-KURDISH FEDERATION IN IRAQ (The two main Kurdish factions sharing control of northern Iraq have drawn up draft constitutions for a future "Iraqi federal republic" and for their autonomous enclave.)

4//The Turkish Times, USA--OPINION: 3 GROUPS ALREADY SQUABBLING OVER OIL-FLUSH NORTH IRAQ (While the Bush administration has yet to decide whether to attack Iraq, rival ethnic groups in the north of that country are already squabbling over the spoils of any future war...The brewing battle suggests that any fighting inside Iraq will not end with Mr. Hussein's ouster and that the United States may be drawn into mediating Iraqi factional disputes or risk unleashing a blood bath if it succeeds in unseating the current government.)

5//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--HELLO PREEMPTION, ADIEU DETERRENCE (The written critiques of the NSS seem to have glossed over the significance and threatening nature of the confluence between preemption and counterproliferation.... For America's friends and potential adversaries, as well as its foes, the dual doctrines of preemption and proactive counterproliferation will serve as sources of moral or even legal dilemma and consternation, respectively. But to think that those doctrines will ultimately deter even the so-called rogue states into forswearing attempts to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction is an exercise in masterful naivete.)

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1//The Sydney Morning Herald Wednesday, September 25, 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/25/1032734170594.html

COMMENT: BLAIR DOSSIER LACKS PROOF BUT THE PUBLIC APPEARS SOLD ON IT

Britain's leader has rallied the faithful again, Herald Correspondent Peter Fray writes.

The power of Tony Blair's dossier is not that it delivers a knockout blow against Saddam Hussein - it does not.

But it does stake out a moral argument against ignoring the Iraqi leader and sets out the groundwork for US-British military action if the United Nations process fails.

It draws together Saddam's record on human rights and his determined attempts to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Instant TV polls showed public support for action against Iraq rising on the strength of Blair's dossier and his confident performance in Parliament.

Importantly, the Prime Minister re-asserted that no military action would happen without a full parliamentary debate and, for the first time in months, linked Iraq with the broader question of Middle East peace.

This is a direct pitch to Arab leaders whose support is crucial for military action against Iraq.

(SNIP)

That said, much of the document has to be taken on faith. There is no proof, just bold assertions, that the intelligence reports are what they claim they are.

There is no proof that Saddam's massive palaces, drawn in the dossier as dwarfing Buckingham Palace, are the hiding places for his weapons and the documents used to build them.

Blair's dossier is a test of confidence, nerve and popularity: his own, his party's and, in the end, the people's. There is no doubting Blair's resolve.

Yesterday, he was able to carry the Parliament with him and, despite some awkward and pointy questions, did not flinch.

Many MPs will remain unconvinced that Saddam must be deposed now or that he is a real and immediate threat.

But many more are ready to go along with Blair and, while his dossier may fall short of some expectations, it will not lose him that support - nor stall the momentum for regime change.

2//The Independent 25 September 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=336453

DESIGNED TO KEEP HAWKS AND DOVES HAPPY
By Andrew Grice Political Editor

In the space of a few words yesterday, Tony Blair managed to please both President George Bush and Clare Short. The Secretary of State for International Development nodded vigorously when Mr Blair reassured the Commons that "our purpose is disarmament". She wasn't nodding after he added: "One way or another it must be acceded to."

The Prime Minister is adopting a twin-track strategy. He has persuaded President Bush to go an extra mile down the United Nations road. "He is under close management," boasted one Blair aide. At the same time, Mr Blair believes that military options must be considered now in case the UN fails to resolve the crisis.

(SNIP)

The strategy is a classic piece of Blairism: send different messages to different audiences in an attempt to keep everyone happy and put off the crucial decisions until the last possible moment.

Yesterday Mr Blair's message was directed more at Labour MPs - and next week's Labour Party conference - than his buddy in Washington. So he was less keen to talk of "regime change" in Iraq; the goal was disarmament through the UN. It was a typically assured performance. But Mr Blair still left many questions unanswered - not least what happens if the UN option fails. His vision of a post-Saddam Iraq was hazy in the extreme.

Can Mr Blair turn round Labour Party and public opinion? The 30 hardline anti-war Labour MPs will never support military action. But the Prime Minister admits privately that some "serious people" occupy the crucial middle ground between the "usual suspects" and the Blair loyalists. As they watched yesterday's Commons debate, Blair aides were optimistic that the "centre of gravity" in the Parliamentary Labour Party was now moving towards his position.

But we have not reached the fork in the road yet; some MPs are keeping their options open. Similarly, Monday's meeting of the Cabinet was not quite the unadulterated triumph portrayed by Downing Street. Blair allies insist that the Cabinet "doves", led by Ms Short and Robin Cook, are prepared to support military action as a last resort if the UN route is blocked. But as one cabinet minister put it: "We are not at the point of no return."

(SNIP)

Mr Blair will be studying the volatile opinion polls closely to see whether yesterday's much-vaunted dossier starts to win over the doubters among the voters. The strong public support for UN-backed action could be a problem if that route is blocked.

Although Mr Blair is winning his various battles, there are plenty more ahead and the question remains: would he really be leading the international charge against President Saddam now if George Bush had not gained his wafer-thin victory over Al Gore?

3//Arabia.com September 24, 2002, 07:56 PM
http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,295873,00.html?IE=H2

KURDS AGREE ON DRAFT CONSTITUTION FOR ARAB-KURDISH FEDERATION IN IRAQ

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - The two main Kurdish factions sharing control of northern Iraq have drawn up draft constitutions for a future "Iraqi federal republic" and for their autonomous enclave.

During meetings on September 18 and 23, a joint committee introduced amendments to a proposed constitution for an Arab-Kurdish federation drafted earlier this year by Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), sources in the committee told AFP.

The amended version, approved by the committee representing the KDP and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), envisages a future federation made up of an Arab region and a Kurdish region.

The rights of "other ethnic groups and minorities" in Iraq would also be upheld and enshrined in the country's future constitution, the sources said.

The two parties will seek the approval of the Kurdish parliament for the proposed constitution for a "federal Iraq" when the revived assembly convenes in KDP-controlled Arbil on October 4.

The document will also be put to a conference of the major Iraqi opposition groups expected to be held in a European capital in October, the sources said, adding they have also drawn up a constitution for Iraqi Kurdistan itself.

Iraqi Kurds have over the past decade tried to persuade other groups opposed to President Saddam Hussein to support the concept of a "federal" Iraq granting them a measure of self-rule in their enclave.

The Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq has effectively been autonomous since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, when it came under Western protection and became out of bounds for the central government in Baghdad.

The constitution panel is one of four joint committees set up by the KDP and PUK under an agreement signed by Barzani and Talabani on September 8 which is designed to complete implementation of a US-brokered 1998 peace deal between the two factions.

The Kurdish parliament has not convened with all its members since 1996 when fighting between the two sides reached its peak.

The KDP holds 51 seats in the assembly and the PUK 49, while five seats are reserved for Christian Assyrians.

Under the September 8 accord, the speakership of the assembly will rotate between the KDP and PUK every three months.

(MORE)

4//The Turkish Times September 15, 2002
(Recent, related perspective on Item #3 above. The Turkish Times is a publication of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations)
http://www.theturkishtimes.com/op_smith.html

OPINION: 3 GROUPS ALREADY SQUABBLING OVER OIL-FLUSH NORTH IRAQ

By Craig S. Smith, September 12, 2002, ANKARA, Turkey, Sept. 11 -

While the Bush administration has yet to decide whether to attack Iraq, rival ethnic groups in the north of that country are already squabbling over the spoils of any future war.

Their focus is Kirkuk, a city with vast reserves of high-quality oil so close to the surface that in one area natural gas escaping from the ground has been on fire since antiquity. Iraq's Arabs control the city, but both ethnic Kurds and the Turkmen minority claim it as their own and all three groups want power over it and its oil if Saddam Hussein falls.

"We will have control of this city; that is what we are fighting for," said Mustafa Ziya, the Ankara representative of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a coalition of 26 Turkmen groups vying for representation in a post-Hussein Iraqi government. They have the backing of Turkey, which has yet to voice support for American military action against Iraq but wants a finger in the Iraqi pie should the Bush administration make a successful move.

Yet, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the more powerful of two Kurdish groups that control northern Iraq, is determined to make Kirkuk the political capital and economic heart of a Kurdish federal state in a future Iraq. It has already drafted an Iraqi constitution outlining such a state with Kirkuk as its most important city.

"Kirkuk is a Kurdish city," said Safeen Dizayee, the K.D.P.'s representative in Ankara. "Even the Ottoman archives show that."

The brewing battle suggests that any fighting inside Iraq will not end with Mr. Hussein's ouster and that the United States may be drawn into mediating Iraqi factional disputes or risk unleashing a blood bath if it succeeds in unseating the current government.

The dispute also puts the Bush administration between rival groups on whom it would have to depend in any war. The United States is likely to use Turkish air bases to attack Iraq and is expected to ask for support from the northern Iraqi Kurds, whose forces number in the tens of thousands.

The Kirkuk dispute flared last week when the K.D.P.'s leader, Massoud Barzani, was quoted in a German newspaper as saying that he would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimeter of our soil," and that if Turkey invaded northern Iraq, his fighters would turn the territory into a "graveyard for Turkish soldiers."
3
Those comments, which Mr. Barzani has since said were "distorted" by the press, prompted the deputy speaker of the Turkish Parliament on Friday to suggest that Ankara declare an autonomous region in northern Iraq for the Turkmen minority, a Turkic people with historical ties to Turkey and who are Iraq's third-largest ethnic group. That region would include oil-rich Kirkuk.

Already, Turkey has threatened to intervene in northern Iraq if the Kurds there declare an independent state or attack the Turkmen minority in any battle for Kirkuk that might follow possible American action. Turkey has soldiers in northern Iraq, although the deputy governor in charge of the only land crossing between Turkey and Iraq has denied reports that the country had moved another 1,000 troops across the border in recent days.

(SNIP)

"A federal state in northern Iraq will be the first step on the way to an independent Kurdish state," said Umit Ozdag, chairman of the conservative Turkish policy institute, Asam. "And it will be impossible to establish a federal state divided on ethnic lines without blood."

Sevket Bulent Yahnici, an official with M.H.P., one of the parties in Turkey's governing coalition, put it more bluntly: "If the Kurds declare a separate state in northern Iraq, we will be forced to invade."

5//Asia Times Online Sep 25, 2002
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DI25Ak02.html

HELLO PREEMPTION, ADIEU DETERRENCE
By Ehsan Ahrari
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based strategic analyst.

President George W Bush's newly released document, The National Security Strategy for the United States of America, issued on September 20, declared in no uncertain terms that the doctrine of deterrence - the bedrock of superpower relations during the Cold War years - is history.

Instead, the dual doctrines of "preemption" and "proactive counterproliferation" will guide America's national security policy (rogue states, your time is up). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be expanded to the hilt (Russia beware), and the People's Republic of China will be negotiated with on adjustments in its policy of political pluralism, human rights and, more to the point, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (China, be careful).

The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a very important document since it spells out the overall strategy of the United States vis-a-vis different regions of the world, enumerates a number of global security issues of primary concern to Washington, and elaborates its policies regarding those issues. Another significance of the NSS is that the Pentagon uses it to develop the National Military Strategy, which, in turn, becomes the basis for developing secret war plans. The US Congress has required every president to produce the NSS every year since the passage of the landmark Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986. Even though it has not been developed every year since then, whenever it has been issued, it has probably been one of the most significant documents spelling out national security policies of a sitting president.

(SNIP)

Deterrence is replaced by the doctrine of preemption, whose operationalization in the immediate future is the doctrine of proactive counterproliferation. It is interesting to note that the Bush administration uses a circular argument regarding preemption. It correctly notes that it is not a new option to counter threats to America's national security. It goes on to observe that that the United States "will not use force in all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression". But in the very next sentence it adds, "Yet in an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world's most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather." In other words, Washington reserves the right to aggressively preempt what it determines as threats to its national security.

The written critiques of the NSS seem to have glossed over the significance and threatening nature of the confluence between preemption and counterproliferation. The near-term application of these doctrines will be "regime change", as the United States is gearing up to effect in Iraq. But in the not-so-distant future, those doctrines are also likely to be applied to Iran and North Korea, for both countries have very active nuclear programs and highly developed missile programs. These two countries, along with Iraq, were mentioned in the Rumsfeld Report of 1998, which has been regarded from the very early days of the Bush administration as the most prescient clarion call regarding emerging threats against the security of the United States, and which served as the chief basis for Bush to insist on the necessity for building the national missile defense (NMD) systems even before he entered the White House. It will also be recalled that the US decision to build the NMD systems was the chief reason why the US also unilaterally abandoned the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which served as the chief foundation for nuclear arms reduction between the United States and former Soviet Union.

Regarding Russia, the imprints of Condoleezza Rice - Russia specialist, National Security Council Advisor and chief architect of the NSS - are quite apparent. While the NSS emphasizes common interests with Russia on fighting global terrorism and strategic arms reduction, it also notes "differences that still divide us". There is little doubt that Russia-Iran nuclear cooperation is very much on the mind of Bush officials when the NSS characterizes Russia's record in combatting the weapons of mass destruction as "dubious".

(SNIP)

The NSS, in the final analysis, is a codification of all the policies that the Bush administration has been pursuing for the past 20 months. Its chief strength is that, in the explication of its worldview, its aspirations, and in expressing its repudiation of a number of global security issues, it is far clearer than the NSS issued during the presidency of Bill Clinton. For America's friends and potential adversaries, as well as its foes, the dual doctrines of preemption and proactive counterproliferation will serve as sources of moral or even legal dilemma and consternation, respectively. But to think that those doctrines will ultimately deter even the so-called rogue states into forswearing attempts to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction is an exercise in masterful naivete.

Survival (or in the case of the rogue states, regime survival) is the most basic instinct and the chief motivating factor for all nation-states. International relations theorists regard those instincts as part and parcel of their "vital interests". By denying the right to prolong their survival through the dual doctrines of preemption and proactive counterproliferation, the Bush administration has only dared the rogue states to intensify their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Hence, perhaps quite unwittingly, those doctrines promise to make the world a more dangerous place now than it was during the Cold War years. At least then, both superpowers were constraining each other's exuberant impulses to dominate.

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© 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
insight@zianet.com

Updated listings of Radio for Progressives on the internet at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical

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