ANALYSIS: An Even-Handed Look at American, European Relations

[Oncle Boris]

Chill, Genghis Farb. When you look at GDP figures, America does less than its fair share.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Ned
K, we really out to pull our troops and bases completely out of Europe. I see no reason for them to be there as Europe can adequately defend itself from Russia if push comes to shove.

The US doesn't keep troops in Europe to defend it from Russia anymore, Ned. The US keeps a base network and a relatively small number of troops there because it makes sense to have forward bases close to realistic flashpoints, especially when they can be in areas where they are somewhat welcome. Just look at how much the US benefits in Iraq from having bases at its disposal in Germany and Turkey, not to mention places like Qatar and Bahrain. The latter two on that list only serve to emphasize the point even more - the US can, for example, move pretty much whatever it wants, whenever it wants, in and out of Ramstein in Germany (where there is first world infrastructure, support, policing, etc). Bases in the Middle East are always going to be a more problematic, especially since there is alot more hostility towards the US in general in the region.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by notyoueither


I don't think that is entirely correct. Yes, the world price effects all supplies, but not all supplies are economic or possible for any given region.

Take Alberta's oil for instance. There is no infrastructure in place to ship it anywhere but to Eastern Canada and the US. The cost of getting that oil to Europe or Japan would be a huge additional cost, and wouldn't even be possible until significant alterations in logistics were made. That takes time. In a crisis, we're talking about access to any oil at all, not just the cost of the oil you can get.

Misses the point. Just because it is easy for the US to physically get oil from Alberta, doesn't mean that it's going to be happy with paying $50-$75 a barrel if the ME supplies start to cinch up. And just because there would be a lag in building the infrastructure doesn't mean it would happen, and start to happen right quick. But Canada's hardly the only other source - Russia, Africa, Mexico, Venezuela are all major exporters too, and they can get it to Europe relatively easily. So all that really happens is that the price of oil will spike and sure, Europe may have a harder time getting it, but the US is still going to pay a sh*tload more for oil than it wants to. Which brings us back full circle - the voters may want the US to become more isolationist, but that sentiment will start to disappear when the economy starts to hurt bad and a few more million people are out of work.

It's always a balancing act. The US cannot be isolationist if it wants to maintain the status quo. It could in the past because there simply wasn't the level of globalization we see now. Pre-WWI, the US flat out didn't depend on foreign trade anywhere near the amount that it does now. I suppose the US could conceivably go back into that mode, but it would take a major shock to the economy to get it done.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Agathon

It's no wonder that the Euros would rather spend the time on diplomacy and put up with less than optimal results, because they've suffered the horrors of war. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world you have a bunch of people who applaud smart bomb videos.

Couple of points:

1) It may be true that they dislike war, however, you will notice, that the two European nations that can actually project power, have done so quite on several occasions. That would be France and the UK. The other powers have static defense forces and so are not able to commit them to things other than peacekeeping missions.

So don't glorify the holy Europeans as having the super high moral ground when we have the French and Italians invading a country to conquer THE DAMN CHOCOLATE SUPPLY. We have French units consistenly making excursions all over Africa.

2) Nobody over here likes, "watching smart bomb videos." Nice uneducated stereotype though.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why don't the other UN members ante up their share?

This is amusing considering the US's recent delinquency of payment of dues . Europe, Japan, etc, have had to make up the slack.

It may be true that they dislike war, however, you will notice, that the two European nations that can actually project power, have done so quite on several occasions. That would be France and the UK. The other powers have static defense forces and so are not able to commit them to things other than peacekeeping missions.

Excellent point! If European states can project power they will. The 'horrors of war' have little to do with it.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
2) Nobody over here likes, "watching smart bomb videos." Nice uneducated stereotype though.

CNN must show them all the time precisely because they are so unpopular with the viewers, I reckon?

[Dauphin]

More likely because they are cheap and easy to show, and/or the only relevant footage available.

[Berzerker]

That was an even handed analysis? All I see are comments from Europeans identifying America's "faults".

[Berzerker]

Chill, Genghis Farb. When you look at GDP figures, America does less than its fair share.

There's that, "you're rich, your 'fair share' is more than ours", argument. The US pays alot more in blood, do you want to put a $ value on that? And the US pays more, period.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Berz, it's a voluntary organization. If the US doesn't like the terms of the agreement, no one is preventing it from leaving.

[Berzerker]

It's about as voluntary as taxes, but so what?

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Berz, it's a voluntary organization. If the US doesn't like the terms of the agreement, no one is preventing it from leaving.

I totally agree. I thought the UN would help keep genocidal regimes from staying in power yet it tried to keep Saddam and his regime gassing 100,000s of people of a race they considered useless. I for one would support the US leaving the UN.

At least there are still a few countries that were prepared to stop Saddam despite the UN's position on supporting it.

[Berzerker]

GF, Imran didn't say we should leave. I suspect he disagrees with you given how he is a Bob Dole Republican.

[GhengisFarb™]

I am somewhat indifferent to the leaving/staying in the UN. I just don't necessarily see that much of a downside to leaving.

[Berzerker]

Me neither, just pluses. Actually, I find the UN to be a repugnant institution, bigger nations effectively go around "voting" on the fate of smaller nations and peoples within those nations and those votes are enforced only when it's in the interest of the most elite nations with the forces, i.e., the US and Europeans acting as partners of a "coalition".

[Verto]

I don't see how the US could be hurt by leaving the UN.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's about as voluntary as taxes, but so what?

So you can decide that you aren't a part of the US government and thus refuse to pay taxes? What a silly comparision!!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


And what, pray tell, was America going to do? Bomb Israel? Bomb France? Israel continually denies they have it and we don't have any solid evidence they do, even though we believe they probably do.

Well, Imran- there's seeing and not seeing- and not seeing what you don't want to see.

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs...3/speech1.html .

'In 1976, the CIA told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a secret briefing that Israel was building bombs with plutonium from Dimona. In 1980, the former head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, Francis Perrin, acknowledged that French companies had helped build a plant in Israel to extract plutonium from Dimona's spent fuel and that France and Israel had helped each other design nuclear weapons.

In 1982 French investigative journalist Pierre Pean, who had gained access to the official French files on Dimona, published Les Deux Bombes, a book revealing that Dimona's cooling circuits were two to three times larger than necessary for a 24-megawatt reactor--proof that Dimona had always been intended to make bomb- quantities of plutonium. The book also confirmed that French technicians had built a plutonium extraction plant at the same site. According to Pean, Israel had extracted enough plutonium from spent fuel for a nuclear weapon by 1966 or 1967.

[....]revealed that Israel was using Norwegian heavy water in the Dimona reactor, and that Israel had promised both the United States and Norway that it would not use their heavy water to make nuclear weapons and would allow both countries to inspect the water to verify that the peaceful use pledge was being kept. Articles based on the study appeared in the U.S. and Norwegian press the following week.

The Project's study was timed to follow the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician who had worked at Dimona for eight years, and who had recounted his experience a month earlier in the London Sunday Times. Vanunu described Dimona's underground plutonium factory, offered evidence that Israel was making thermonuclear weapons, and said that the Dimona reactor had been scaled up twice before he arrived in 1977.'

More on Mordechai Vanunu:

http://www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk/

'The Norwegian Foreign Ministry flatly rejected the Project's findings. It said that as far as it knew, Israel was using the heavy water for peaceful purposes'

The Media Campaign

On January 21, 1987, the Project published its first op-ed in Arbeiderbladet, the newspaper allied with the governing Labor party. On February 6, 1987, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (the official state network) followed with an hour-long radio documentary on Norway's heavy water exports, including interviews with British physicist Frank Barnaby and me. Barnaby and I both charged that Israel was making nuclear weapons and urged Norway to exercise its inspection rights.

A week later the Norwegian government reacted. It said that it would ask Israel informally to allow an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Israel rejected this request in April, stating that it would be impossible to distinguish Norwegian heavy water from stocks received from other sources. Israel also said that the IAEA was biased against Israel and would not perform a fair inspection.

In May the Wisconsin Project published a second article in Arbeiderbladet, rebutting Israel's claims and pointing out that Israel was the first country in history to break an inspection pledge on a "peaceful" nuclear import. The Project argued that if Israel would not allow an IAEA inspection, Norway should exercise its right under the 1959 agreement to demand that Israel return the heavy water.

At the end of September 1987, Israel formally denied the request for an IAEA inspection. In October Norway sent a technical team to Israel but the team was not allowed to conduct an inspection. '

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0795/9507031.htm

'According to published sources, the CIA is confident that one of its surveillance satellites observed the first above-ground test of an Israeli nuclear device on Sept. 22, 1979 over the South Indian Ocean. '

http://www.fas.org/news/safrica/97-087.html


Now how much proof exactly is required, Imran? I think you have something more than a smoking gun there.

[Nubclear]

My anti-American friends and I would be most happy if the US left the UN

[Berzerker]

Oh sh!t, here we go again.

So you can decide that you aren't a part of the US government and thus refuse to pay taxes?

No Imran, I can't. Nor can I stop paying the taxes given to the UN. Both are involuntary... Is this where you try to argue that US support for the UN is voluntary because a super majority of the Senate and the Prez agreed to support it? Shall I shoot that down now or can you see where that leads without my help?

What a silly comparision!!

That "analysis" has become a sure sign you've fallen off the path to Logicland.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Now how much proof exactly is required, Imran? I think you have something more than a smoking gun there.

I said we believe they probably have a nuclear device. The only real 'solid evidence' that they have one is CIA suveillance satellite saying there was an above ground test. Of course Israel denies it to this day, and most don't list Israel as a nuclear power, saying it most likely does have nuclear weapons, but we can't know for sure. As for 'heavy water' and the IAEA inspections, Saddam did the same thing (at the very least until Israel bombed nuclear plants in Iraq), but we know he never got a nuclear weapon.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by ErikM

CNN must show them all the time precisely because they are so unpopular with the viewers, I reckon?

Where do you live?

I don't see them "showing them all the time."

[Imran Siddiqui]

Nor can I stop paying the taxes given to the UN.

But the US can easily decide to stop paying dues to the UN and leave! Duh!

No one is forcing the US from staying a member of the UN, but if it continues to want to do so, then it has to pay it's "fair share" of dues.

That "analysis" has become a sure sign you've fallen off the path to Logicland.

I'm questioning whether you've ever been there.

--

Btw, thanks for the new sig.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


I said we believe they probably have a nuclear device. The only real 'solid evidence' that they have one is CIA suveillance satellite saying there was an above ground test. Of course Israel denies it to this day, and most don't list Israel as a nuclear power, saying it most likely does have nuclear weapons, but we can't know for sure. As for 'heavy water' and the IAEA inspections, Saddam did the same thing (at the very least until Israel bombed nuclear plants in Iraq), but we know he never got a nuclear weapon.

Right. You missed the bit about the South African minister confirming what the scientists at Los Alamos had said all along- in return for Israeli expertise on designing the weapon, Israel received uranium from South Africa.

'Blast from the past: Los Alamos scientists receive vindication

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 11, 1997 -

Significant events in 1979: the Shah left Iran, the Three Mile Island reactor suffered a partial core meltdown, and a clandestine nuclear test off the tip of South Africa was detected by an aging satellite, Vela 6911.

Two of those world events made headlines, one remained both a partial mystery and an ongoing controversy until this year.

In an April 20 article that appeared in the Israeli Ha'aretz Daily Newspaper, South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad confirmed for the first time that a flare over the Indian Ocean detected by an American satellite in September 1979 was from a nuclear test. This statement was confirmed by the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, as an accurate account of what Pahad officially acknowledged. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium and other assistance.'


And the reasons why Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped and imprisoned:

Nov 76-Oct 85
Works as a nuclear technician at the 'Nuclear Reactor Centre', Dimona, Israel.

1980-85
Graduate and post-graduate studies in philosophy and geography.

Jan-May 1986
Travels in the Far East (Thailand, Burma, Nepal).

1986
Baptised in an Anglican church in Sydney, Australia.

September 1986
Debriefed by the Sunday Times and by scientists.

28 Sept 1986
The Sunday Mirror publishes Vanunu's story, with Mordechai's photograph, as a hoax.

30 Sept 1986
Disappeared. Israeli Secret Services lured Vanunu from London to Rome, where he was abducted after being drugged.

5 Oct 1986
Sunday Times publishes Mordechai's story with photographs of Dimona under title: "Revealed: The Secrets of Israel's Nuclear Arsenal". Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times at that time, has since said that this was the most important scoop that the paper ever carried while he was editor.

9 Nov 1986
Israel admits for the first time that Vanunu is in its custody and being 'legally' detained.

22 Dec 1986
Mordechai flashes message to the press on the palm of his hand "I was hijacked in Rome 30.9.86..."

January 1987
Italy opens investigation into the kidnapping.

8 Aug 1987
Meir Vanunu gives information on Mordechai's kidnapping to the press; an Israeli court issues a warrant for Meir's arrest.

30 August 1987
Mordechai's trial begins.

December 1987
Mordechai is awarded the Right Livelihood Award in Sweden (the "Alternative Nobel Prize").

1988
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation publishes the book Israel's Bomb - the First Victim. The Case of Mordechai Vanunu.

February 1988
The Danish Peace Foundation Award.

24 March 1988
Convicted of treason, espionage and revealing state secrets.

27 March 1988
Sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.

November 1994
The Times reports story in Jane's Intelligence Review confirming Israel has 200 nuclear warheads.


I think we can safely imagine he wasn't imprisoned for revealing the secret of tasty chollah bread, or the location of the best falafels in Israel.

The American Embassy in South Africa confirms the story printed in an Israeli newspaper, quoting a South African government minister, Israel abducts and imprisons a technician employed in its nuclear 'research' establishment, and the Times can quote Jane's Intelligence Review, but you need what, exactly?

Damascus turned into a glassy puddle?

[Imran Siddiqui]

You missed the bit about the South African minister confirming what the scientists at Los Alamos had said all along- in return for Israeli expertise on designing the weapon, Israel received uranium from South Africa.

I didn't.

It's considered an 'open secret'.... but in saying so, one has to acknowledge the 'secret' part of the statement. The IAEA says Israel probably has nuclear weapons, but they don't have solid proof.

The American Embassy in South Africa confirms the story printed in an Israeli newspaper, quoting a South African government minister, Israel abducts and imprisons a technician employed in its nuclear 'research' establishment, and the Times can quote Jane's Intelligence Review, but you need what, exactly?

A bomb perhaps? I mean, if it is proven that Israel has these weapons (instead of very likely), then why does the Israeli government continue to deny accusations?

The official position is that Israel most likely has nuclear weapons, but we aren't going to say that there is 100% proof of it.

What are you arguing about anyway? Just to be contrarian?

[Dauphin]

For those who want the US to leave the UN, does that include all UN organisations, including the likes of the WHO, IMF, WTO to name but a few? Or is your reaction mainly out of military frustration?

I would like to know what you think withdrawing from the UN would mean, and what its implications would be.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm sure they haven't thought it through that far .

[Dauphin]

I don't think they have either, that's why I'm asking.

[DinoDoc]

When you look at GDP figures, America does less than its fair share.

So? We pay the most. I want service accorded us on that basis.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It is... after all, the US uses the veto power MUCH more than any other country on the Security Council .