NATO cooperation with Russia is worth pursuing

The new secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has called on NATO to form closer ties with Russia, and suggested discussing linking missile defense systems. This is an excellent idea.

Mr Rasmussen, former prime minister of Denmark, has also said that NATO and Russia should focus on their common interests, and not their disagreements. It is easy for those in politics to pander to the hardliners in their constituencies by criticising and talking tough. But since the election of Barack Obama (and probably before then), the United States has adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward all its potential opponents. As yet, this new approach has reduced tension between the US and Russia. Barack recently cancelled US plans for components of a missile shield to be placed in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Soviet satellites, and the Russian government responded by shelving plans to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad.

Upholding the nuclear nonproliferation regime is one common interest of both NATO and Russia. Barack has taken action to show he is committed to nonproliferation, which will probably help his diplomatic efforts in places like Iran as well. Republican accusations that these actions will embolden America’s enemies and Czech opposition worries that they will endanger its nation are unfounded. Friends and foes alike take cues from the United States. If the US is building big weapons, they will too. If the US reduces missile stocks, other governments are expected to put their weapons development on hold. Fear drives militaries to order bigger and better weapons. Barack’s moves on missiles, and NATO’s greater cooperation with Russia, will reduce fear, not increase risk-taking. And to say that the US must be a bulwark against all possible threat from Russia is along the lines of the incorrect belief that the US can contain any and all threats direct against itself or its allies. It cannot. However, the deeper its ties to Russia are, the more painful sanctions will be to Russia if it becomes belligerent.

Russia and NATO also have common interests in fighting piracy and terrorism, and energy supplies. The Georgia question, human rights and so on will need to be addressed but it will soon be possible to discuss them against the backdrop of amicable talks. Until then, NATO and Russian governments should embrace confidence-building measures. These measures should include reciprocal information exchanges among security forces, joint military exercises and cooperation to reduce the spread of small arms and land mines around the world.

Not many of these suggestions are in the works but they are all possible ways of reducing animosity between two blocs that have been considering on the brink of a war of annihilation. If Mr Rasmussen stays on course, he will leave a legacy of peace.

Questions on Iran’s future

Iran is at a crossroads. We do not know what is going to happen, because its near future depends on the next move of an opaque government. Everyone is asking if it will crack down harder or somehow relent. I do not have many answers but I do have a lot of questions.

First, questions for people who back Mir Hossein Mousavi. His supporters, including most “Westerners”, are certain Ahmadinejad’s government rigged the election. Sure, there is some evidence that the election was stolen and should have gone to Mousavi, but how can we be sure? Did you witness the election? We are so quick to let our biases get in the way that if the pro-Western leader loses and self-identified Westerners are told he may have been cheated, all of sudden everyone believes it.

Second are my questions for Iran’s government. If the government cracks down on demonstrators and institutes martial law and more repression, will it work? Will angry Iranians hold back? Can they be repressed? A million people, or even more, were in the streets of Tehran. And in case the government has learned nothing from its own history, the clerics should open the books up and look at 1979.

So more repression could backfire terribly for the ruling elites. But what is their alternative? Elites will do anything to avoid losing power. They will not simply step aside and let angry young people sweep them out. That will only happen if the protest reaches critical mass and overwhelms the security forces. Even if the govt backs down, what are they going to do? Would they satisfy all the demands of the demonstrators? Or just enough to keep them quiet? Would they put Mousavi in power? What about those who voted for Ahmadinejad? Will they just roll over and accept it?

Here is a hard question for the same people. Is Mousavi so great? He preaches a message of liberalism, of which I like the sound, but look at his history. A leader of the Islamic Revolution, who approved of the seizing of the hostages at the US embassy; PM during the Iran-Iraq war, when a million people died (though that was instigated by Saddam); one time member of the leadership council of Hezbollah, and does not recognise Israel. Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says “Mousavi is Ahmadinejad without the invective or anger.” That description does not fill me with hope. Would he be more likely than Ahmadinejad to give up building nuclear weapons? (According to the Jerusalem Post, no.) Given Iran’s Ayatollah-centered political system, does he even have that choice?

Iran’s future is in the hands of its government. It must choose wisely, balancing its desire for the status quo with a realistic handling of the crisis of confidence in its rule. Unless there is another revolution, do not expect a new, liberal democratic Iran any time soon.

Contrarian views on what you may be worried about

Are most people natural worriers? Or are they just worried because all the worriers around them tell them to be?

Boy, there are a lot of worried people out there nowadays. Almost everything you could worry about, people have exaggerated it to the stature of Godzilla, poised to bring down civilisation as we know it. Popular books and newspaper articles warn of the end of everything we hold dear.

Fortunately, there are some skeptical optimists out there to shed a little perspective on things, put a stop to all the irresponsible fearmongering and help you get back to living your life. I should note that I do not read just to maintain my optimism, I read to maintain a balanced viewpoint on things. When everyone seems to think something is bad, there is always someone else to tell you the good side of things. This post will give you the pessimists’ side of things, followed by a contrarian’s. Both are worth listening to before you decide to worry. (Please follow the links I provide to get my full side of each story.)

Pessimist: Climate change is the biggest threat to our civilisation and the biggest challenge to our generation. It threatens to destroy everything we hold dear.

Contrarian: That is unlikely. To be clear, I am not denying climate change, nor that it could be harmful. What I am not convinced about is that everything is going to blow up in our faces and our grandchildren will be left with nothing. Climate change is one of those issues on which we have too much certainty, too much worrying that the end is near, and not enough debate about the facts.

Furthermore, every generation worries about environmental collapse. When I was young, it was the ozone layer. Thirty years ago, it was global cooling. And so on for the past hundred years. None of these problems has destroyed us yet. I guess we are just more resilient than the doomsayers realised.

Pessimist: We are running out of natural resources. Oil has peaked, wood is disappearing, and wars are brewing over water. We are in big trouble.

Contrarian: The first problem with these arguments is that they are trying to predict the future without firm grounding in the present. Sure, those things could be true, but we are always finding ourselves wrong about them. We thought gold, silver, copper, iron and so on would all run out completely twenty or thirty years ago, and they have not. Oil might have peaked but we do not know. Existence of debate about something (like peak oil) does not mean it has been proven. And water supplies are getting thinner in some places, where there is indeed water war, and greater in other places, as global warming frees up water supplies embedded in glaciers. Besides, how could we run out of water? It could become harder to find for some people, and harder to clean and desalinate, but surely we are not going to run out.

The second problem is that the future changes every day. Predictions by the wisest experts are notoriously unreliable, partly because every time there is a new, disrupting technology, everything changes. For instance, a big environmental problem at the end of the 19^th century was horses. Everyone was getting around in horses, but horses were leaving messes all over the streets. Flies were being born in great numbers and spreading disease. What was to be done? Then, the automobile came along and saved the day. The point is, we do not know what new technology is coming or when. Every time a new technology comes along, yes, of course, it causes new problems, but it also solves old ones. The better technology gets, the better our understanding of science is, the more likely we can find our way out of the mess. I admit we could be in trouble, but people talk as if, if we turn on another light or start up another car, society will collapse. We are stronger than that.

Thirdly, I am not worried about the depletion of any of these things. Humankind has proven itself highly adaptive to change, and the depletion of one or another natural resource will be shaken off so we can go destroy something else.

Pessimist: China’s rise is a military and economic threat to everyone else, especially us westerners.

Contrarian: We are really scared of China, aren’t we? But why? First, China is not as “rising” as some might have you believe. As I wrote earlier, China is not about to overtake the United States in anything except instability of its environment.

Second, the rise of China is, for the most part, a good thing. It means a big new market for companies from the rest of the world, and new businesses, ideas, products and so on for the world outside China. The China of Mao’s era or before would not be helping to stop piracy in the Arabian Sea, or terrorism on its Central Asian borders. It means more wealth and, in my opinion, more security, not less.

Third, the rise of this or that country is always feared, and always has been. When Japan was ascendant in the 1980s, the bookstores were full of books saying how powerful it would become and take over the world. How many books do you see about that now? What are you afraid of? That China will take over the world? That Chinese business will be more competitive than your country’s? The only problem I see is that Chinese consumers and businesses will use more and more natural resources and create more and more pollution. But it would be hypocritical of me to tell them to stop trying to achieve a better life.

BUT, say the pessimists (and I was one of them a couple of years ago), China could be the source of the next world war. No doubt, China’s Taiwan policy could mean a war between China and Taiwan that the United States might step into. But what is the likelihood of that?

Contrarian: First, a war between China and the United States would be immensely costly. The Chinese government and some of its people would be behind a war to regain Taiwan, but they are not so arrogant as to think they could simply defeat the United States in a year or two. Americans, on the other side, are unlikely to want to engage one of the most powerful militaries in the world simply for the sake of Taiwan’s independence.

Second, there are many people from China in the United States and many from the United States in China. These are people who will do anything to avoid war between the two countries. That means thousands of people saying, “if you want them, you’ve got to go through me.”

What are some other looming wars you may be building a bomb shelter for?

Pessimists: Iran is building a bomb and war is inevitable.

Contrarian: War with Iran is highly unlikely. Aside from a few opportunists, nobody wants it. Iran is not attacking anyone and Barack is not attacking them.

Pessimists: North Korea is shooting rockets and threatening everyone. Won’t they go to war too?

Contrarian: They cannot. Nuclear weapons are so powerful that no one can ever use them. North Korea is a complicated matter but nuclear weapons are among the least of our worries.

Besides, who would want to fight a war when this economic crisis will bring the world to its knees alone? The pessimists, including one of my favourite historians, Niall Ferguson, say that it could lead to depression and war, like the 1929 crash did. (To be fair, Ferguson said “there will be blood”, not “there will be world war”.) I, contrarian, think things are fundamentally different and are not as bad as in the 1930s.

We have lower trade barriers and fewer suffocating regulations than in the days of the Depression. The stock market crash in 1929 was inevitable: stock markets sometimes go up and down slowly, but when they reach such dizzying heights as in 1929, they crash painfully. The crash was pretty big in 1987, too, but then things recovered. The Great Depression was brought on, however, by excessive protectionism and regulation that I do not think we will resort to. Though today there is, of course, a risk of war, none of the major powers are about to become socialist, fascist or communist, and none of them have tariffs even approaching those of the 1930s. You might lose your job, but this economic crisis will not mean the end of the world.

The reason we are told to worry about all these things is that people want to draw attention to their cause, and they know that it is not enough to say “the climate is getting slightly warmer” or “there is a remote possibility of war”. Instead, one person exaggerates, then the next person doubles it, and so on around the circle until everyone is screaming and throwing their hands in the air.

To answer my original question, my guess is that worriers on one end tell everyone else to worry, so they do. Please do not let yourself get caught up in the hysteria.

Eliminating nuclear weapons is a costly distraction

President Barack is expending political capital on trying to eliminate nuclear weapons. I do not think his endeavour is unrealistic, as he understands his vision is a long-term one, but I do think there are far bigger threats to human security than nuclear weapons.

The problem with prioritising the elimination of nuclear weapons and their trade is that they are largely irrelevant. The reason Mutually-Assured Destruction, or MAD, existed was because, if one of the superpowers shot the other with nuclear missiles, the other would have enough time to retaliate. If one country retaliated, the other would follow up with most of its nuclear arsenal and millions would be killed on both sides. No one wanted to risk millions of lives from their own side, so they could not use their nukes. MAD still exists today. None of the nuclear powers is likely ever to use its weapons for fear of the consequences on its own soil. Nuclear weapons have such devastating impacts that they are simply not worth using.

The case of North Korea is particularly pertinent. While it seems like an irrational rogue state with a desire to explode large bombs everywhere, my guess is the North Korean government understands international politics. If North Korea actually killed people with a nuclear weapon, it would be bombarded and flattened. Kim Jong-il can ride the bomb to the moon if he likes, but he has no option to use it down here.

Moreover, because of MAD, and because most of the major powers and some minor powers have nuclear weapons, it is possible that the continued existence of such dangerous tools mean a more peaceful world. Nuclear weapons could be the reason there was never a direct conflict between the US and the USSR, or the US and China, or the USSR and China, or interstate violence in Europe during the Cold War. It has not eliminated war, of course, but it has led nuclear powers to some careful stepping when in conflict with each other.

(Of course nuclear weapons are not a perfect deterrent. It was believed that massive militaries among European powers before World War One would prevent war, and in fact it led to war. But nuclear weapons are far more destructive than any number of soldiers in trenches.)

While Barack may help to reduce nuclear arsenals, and even set the treads rolling to bulldoze them all, he may want to spend more time and money cleaning up the world’s most dangerous places. The real worry is not that governments have nuclear weapons, but that apocalyptic religious extremists could. They seem to be the only ones that would use them, and the ones who would be too difficult to retaliate against. Shoring up governmental controls over nuclear technology where it exists would help keep the bombs out of the hands of non-state extremists.

If Barack wants a more peaceful world, he should change his priorities. If we are going to eliminate any weapons, let us start smaller. Barack would be better off focusing on small arms and landmines than nuclear weapons. Guns wielded outside warzones cause 200,000 deaths a year, and millions are produced every year. Arms embargoes, the hobbling of commercial weapons makers, and addressing conflicts individually are all answers to reducing firearm death statistics. Landmines caused 7000 deaths and casualties between 2003 and 2005, most of which were in just four countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Colombia. The worldwide landmine ban and disarmament movement could be given a shot of adrenaline by a president eager to set a name for himself as a man of global peace.

There are other preventable problems that kill. Malaria kills over 1m people a year, AIDS 2m, TB 2m, diarrhea 2m, and so on. Nuclear weapons have a pretty clean record next to disease. So why not switch priorities? Bolster efforts to provide vaccines, water sanitation technology, mosquito nets, condoms and education and you will greatly reduce the instances of death by preventable disease, especially among children. We have all these options to help people that I believe are immensely more urgent than nuclear disarmament.

Destroying stockpiles of nuclear weapons may feel good, but it will probably not solve the real problems, and it might even create new ones.