Skip, I think the point in the OP is not what the US administration think, but rather what the residents of the countries involved think.
I would say a great many of the citizens of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran etc… would see this position from the US government as grossly hyprocritical in light of the speeches and assurances given regarding disarmament and “peace and stability in the Middle East”.
This partisan approach from a supposed world peacemaker must appear in bad light to other nations. Especially when the US refuse to ever acknowledge blame in the Israeli position, regardless of context.
(note: this cite used for the list of UN resolutions vetoed by the US only)
Although Isreal has an excellent democracy (something the surronding countries should look up to and strive for) it is laughable that you would bring up human rights. As they have been heavly critized world round for their abuse of basic human rights in the West Bank and Gaza.
That’s possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. It’s also a ridiculous lie; there’s no way someone as smart and experienced as Colin Powell actually beleives something that silly.
The very basis of intelligence is gauging INTENTIONS. If you based your preparations on capability, then logically the United States should be preparing for war with the United Kingdom, since the UK has nuclear and chemical weapons. Based on capability, the UK is obviously far more dangerous to the USA than Iraq is.
Or how about Canada? Canada doesn’t have nuclear weapons but it has many breeder reactors and has all the technical capability to build nukes. Canada’s far closer to building nukes than Iraq ever was, based on capability. Canada has bombers that could be over New York City in less than an hour. So why is Canada not being invaded as we speak?
Since the United States is NOT seriously preparing for war with many countries that have far more capability to attack the USA than Iraq ever did, one can only conclude this “capabilities, not intentions” line is a big load of crap.
I’m sure tagos can speak for himself. So i’ll just point out an obvious mis-reading on your part:
Where “potential enemy” is the key part that you missed. Israel is clearly a potential enemy of Syria, while neither the UK nor Canada can be construed as a potential enemy of the US.
So please save your ranting. Sometimes dumbness lies in the eyes (and mind) of the beholder.
While IANAL, and I don’t particularly back US policy towards Israel, legally Israel is in the clear for possessing nuclear weapons as far as I know. They never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so Israeli possession of nuclear arms is in the same category as India, Pakistan, and the position South Africa used to be in. Syria, however, did sign the convention, so any nuclear weapons program would be a violation of that agreement. Both Syria and Israel are signatories to the 1925 Geneva Protocol, so the use of (though possibly not stockpiling of - as I said, IANAL) chemical or biological weapons by either one would violate that agreement.
As a practical matter, it is a bit silly to attempt the moral high ground with regards to a Syrian WMD program when it’s next door neighbor, to whom the US turns a blind eye, could end civilization in the middle east any time it so chose. Would the US position actually change if, say, Syria were to get rid of any chemical or biological weapons, announce it was going to withdraw from the NPT and then acquire nuclear weapons? What worries me is that like it or not, in 50 or 100 years any nation that wants them will have nuclear weapons.
In fact, the US Military has prepared plans for war with Canada. Such plans have been in existance for about 75 years. As well as plans for war with many other friendly countries. Preparing such contingency plans is one of the ways the military occupies itself between wars.
See Cecil’s column here
for more details.
t-bonham, I do know about U.S. war plans with Canada. Frankly, the ones cited are sort of out of date, and I think you will agree the degree of “preparation” the U.S. is engaging in with respect to Canada is pretty insignificant.
As to the OP, I think the reason the U.S. isn’t asking Israel to get rid of its WMDs is that the U.S. and Israel are allies. It’s simple, but dammit, it just might be correct.
‘This crisis demonstrates that in planning our own defense policy, we have to plan on the basis of capabilities, not on the basis of intentions. Defense planners are always accused of doing so in order to justify unpopular purchases, but it is a sound strategy.’
Paul Wolfowitz
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
“The Bush Administration’s Strategy Towards the Gulf Crisis”
Wye Plantation Policy Conference
September 14, 1990
Not everything exists on the net so no quote (it was an answer in a Press conference of some sort), however, anyone with any knowledge of defence issues or anyone who feels in a position to hurl insults and accusations on this topic knows or should know this to be a truism. To quote the Office of Homeland Security,
Vulnerabilities x Intentions x Capabilities = Threat
PDGS
Partnership for Democratic Governance and Security
Title: United States. Quadrennial Defense Review Report - II. Defense Strategy
A Capabilities-Based Approach
‘The new defense strategy is built around the concept of shifting to a “capabilities-based” approach to defense. That concept reflects the fact that the United States cannot know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or non-state actor will pose threats to vital U.S. interests or those of U.S. allies and friends decades from now. It is possible, however, to anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might employ to coerce its neighbors, deter the United States from acting in defense of its allies and friends, or directly attack the United States or its deployed forces. A capabilities-based model - one that focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be and where a war might occur - broadens the strategic perspective. It requires identifying capabilities that U.S. military forces will need to deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception, and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives. Moving to a capabilities-based force also requires the United States to focus on emerging opportunities that certain capabilities, including advanced remote sensing, long-range precision strike, transformed maneuver and expeditionary forces and systems, to overcome anti-access and area denial threats, can confer on the U.S. military over time.’
Google provides mountains of quotes and articles on the importance of capability in threat assessment and I damn wish foul mouthed jerks would make use of it before trying to pass off gut prejudice and hero worship as some sort of worthwhile contribution. Fighting not abetting ignorance please.
First, please point to the “foul mouth jerks” who have questioned the importance of capability in threat assessment.
Now, let’s review your original statement:
To support that argument, you first quote Paul Wolfowitz. Now, anyone can recognize that Wolfowitz isn’t Powell or Rumseld. However, I am even willing to acknowledge the difference, particularly with Rumsfeld, is minor. I accept the Wolfowitz quote. But I also note that the “Bush Administration” referenced was that of Bush Sr., not Dubya.
And, as we all know, 9/11 changed everything. How useful was “capabilities, not intentions” in defending the USA against the 9/11 attacks?
I provided a link that quoted Rumsfeld, highlighting the importance of both capabilities and intentions in gauging the threat from Saddam. FTR, it was the very first link with the search term [intentions capabilities powell rumsfeld] in Google.
Then you quote the Department of Homeland Defense, which specifically includes “intentions” in threat assessment, not excludes, as you originally postulated.
Then you quote the Quadrennial Defense Review Report (dated just after 9-11, thank goodness) which included this quote, preceding the quote you selected:
But there is plenty more. How about:
How about Ari Fleischer:
Now, I’ve looked through many, many search results, and I cannot find a single statement that supports your original assertion. Try a Google search on [capabilities “not intentions” Powell Rumsfeld] and you’ll get one result, with the phrase “capabilities, if not intentions”.
Well, I think it’s pretty well established that countries generally do not ask their allies to disarm. I’m not sure how the U.S. could “lose” credibility in that regard. For 4000 years, everyone has wanted strong allies and weak enemies.
tagos, with all due respect, I’ve forgotten more about military intelligence than most people will ever know, it having been my career at one point, and I am telling you right now that planning for capabilities rather than intent is the oldest line of bullshit in the entire field. It’s exactly what they say when they really don’t know what’s going to happen, but want justification for budget increases.
The trick of intelligence is, and always has been, judging intent. You MUST plan based on intent, not just capability. Knowing how many tanks Enemystan has won’t much help you if you don’t know if, when and where they plan to attack. The cute little “of our enemies” qualifier, which you seem to think dismisses my argument, in fact supports it, because it’s a subtle admission that it’s intent that counts - the term “enemy” means, of course, countries with hostile intent. You cannot dispute the United Kingdom has substantial capability for destruction. Why isn’t the United States planning for war with the UK despite the UK’s enormous capability for destruction? Because anyone can safely assume the UK has no INTENT of attacking. Why does the U.S. have up-to-date war plans for invading North Korea/defending South Korea? Intent. NK has substantially less capability than any number of U.S. allies; the reason the U.S. prepares for war with North Korea, and not the UK, is a difference of intent.
It’s intelligence with regards to intent that matters. Anyone can count tanks and bombs; intent is the hard thing to figure out and the most important think to plan for. If you’d like 100 examples, I would be glad to list them, but I thought this was so brutally obvious that no sane person would dispute it. Wolfowitz et al. are engaging in doublespeak so transparent you could read the NY Times through it.
Why did the D-Day invasion work? The Germans knew the Allies’ capabilities quite well. But they didn’t know the intent (e.g. where they would land.)
Go back 4 years; why did Germany’s invasion of France go so well? France knew the German order of battle, they knew their weapons. But they misread the intent.
Why did the U.S. not see the true nature of the Tet Offensive in 1968? Because they misread the VC’s intent (they believed the concentration of the attack was to be at Khe Sanh.)
Why did the Falkland Islands war happen? Because the British did not correctly predict Argentina’s intent - due to political shenanigans, they simply blinded themselves to the impending attack. (And in parallel, Argentina blinded itself to the fact that the UK would launch a full-scale war to recover them.) They knew the Argentine order of battle pretty well.
Kursk? The Russians correctly predicted the Germans’ intent; the Germans did not correctly predict the Russians’ intent.
Why did the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait catch the U.S. by surprise? The U.S. knew Iraqi capabilities. They (and everyone else, really) misread Iraqi intent.
I mean, this is the oldest story in the book, man. It’s the second thing they teach you in basic intelligence, right after “The Intelligence Cycle” - It’s figuring INTENT that’s most important, but it’s also the hard part. People who stress capability are taking the easy route.
WMD are dangerous when they are in the hands of unstable governments. What would make the region more stable would be a change in religious philosophy by Muslims. You can’t have a religious state where clerics stand up in front of a crowd and chant “death to (fill in the country of your choice)”.
If they were Quakers, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Nobody worries about France because it is a stable government. Pakistan could unravel at any moment. The problem is religious in nature and has nothing to do with specific countries.
The main point I’m getting here is that Isreal does have WMDs, but is the only democracy in the Middle East, and therefore it is in the U.S.'s best interests to ignore their breaches and concentrate only on Arab nations which are not democracies; so sort of a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. Is that an accurate portrayal of the argument?
The problem I’m seeing with such a policy is that by pointing out that Isreal is the only “democracy” we are in effect declaring the entire Arab world to be non-democratic. But I don’t think the Arab world would see it that way; I’m sure they would interpret our attempt to favor “democracy” in the Middle East as U.S. expansionism and/or favoritism towards Isreal.
Setting aside for the moment the morality of a foreign policy based only on what’s good for us, isn’t such a position simply untenable? Can the U.S. really base its foreign policy on alienating the entire Arab world, without serious repercussions? Should we want to? And has already been pointed out, will we have any credibility if we use our military might to demand that only the enemies of our friends disarm? Can our country survive without credibility? Is it wise to try?
