The Point

Thursday, October 12, 2006

A very special guest

I would like to dedicate this post to a very special guest reading tonight from British Columbia. He is young, dashing, and fond of mayonnaise. My friend, I did not forget you.

The other day in my Persian class an intellectual disagreement came up. I don't remember how exactly, but my friend Dena and I started discussing Iran's relationship with the United States. From matters of neocolonialism we quickly hopped straight onto nuclear weapons programs, and before I knew it, about a dozen of us began arguing over whether or not Iran has the right to develop a nuclear bomb. This is a class, I should tell you, of about half adult students, two thirds Persian kids, Middle Eastern Studies Students to anthropology students to realtors to financial consultants to wayward occasional poets and general disturbers of the peace. The discussion was heated, to say the least.

Very rarely do federal NDP Leader Jack Layton and I share perspectives on issues of international import, but I must say he raised a very pressing and valid point this week after North Korea announced it had formally joined the nuclear club itself. It's all fine and well for Blair and the Chinese Foreign Ministry to condemn the DPRK's unquestionably provocative underground test of a nuclear weapon. But, as Layton argued, does it not boil down to the most dangerous and outrageous hypocrisy for these countries to condemn Kim Jong-Il's pursuit of nuclear armament when they themselves produce arsenals many times more deadly and equally threatening to global security? Who has the right to possess nuclear weapons, the right to use or to threaten with them, and who determines the possessors of these rights? Surely not the other nuclear powers themselves.

Of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, all of them -- Russia, China, France, Britain and United States -- have nuclear weapons. Nuclear Non-Proliferation agreements have been in place for decades. Curiously, none of these countries seems in any hurry to dismantle their nuclear capabilities, and the United States seems, in fact, to be heading back to testing new weapons itself in Western Shoshone land (already the most bombed region on the planet; this test has been deferred but I have been unable to find more information on the delay). There are ample arguments in defense of these countries' decision not to disarm. It may be pointed out, for example, that the nuclear capabilities of the USSR and the United States kept either from employing any or engaging in direct war. I would counter that Vietnamese and Afghani people still reeling from proxy wars might have a thing or two to say about that, but there you go. It might also be argued that North Korea is a 'rogue state,' and is led by a cruel dictatorship operating under the guise of communism, willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens to starvation in its pursuit of military might and international defiance. But what moral ground do countries like the Russia or the United States have to stand on by these standards?

How might you present the argument to Ahmadinejad that Bush's administration is any less of a threat to global security, when the last five years have seen the countries to its immediate east and west savaged by wars instigated by the American government? And why, then, does it not have the right to build up nuclear weapons to defend itself, when countries like Israel and Pakistan meet barely a murmur of constenation for doing the very same thing? This is, essentially, the argument Dena and several other people in our class were trying to make. Every country should have the right to defend itself from threats to its security, right? And all indications have shown that for the past fifty years or so, the countries that don't have the bomb get bombed, and the ones that do don't.

Our friend Chelsea said she thought every country should get a nuclear weapon to prevent any international conflicts from ever arising again. I rather thought they were quite mad, but I wasn't sure how to counter their arguments persuasively. No, the nuclear powers are in no moral position to argue that any other country should not get the bomb. Their hypocrisy is unconscionable; the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atrocious treatment of the Western Shoshone, and the unnerving number of weapons unaccounted for in the former USSR should prove, unquestionably, that possession of nuclear weapons is an unqualified danger to human security. That they cling to these false prophets of safety denies them any moral footing on issues of nuclear armament. But where the argument comes down to an issue of balance, I will cry foul.

North Korea's announcement this week, and speculation that South Korea and Japan may now follow suit to defend themselves, proves that this process engenders escalation, not neutralisation. No matter who the country in question is, no matter how many other countries possess these weapons, no matter how many thousands they refuse to get rid of, there are simply some universal moral codes we must adhere to. Use of nuclear weapons is lunacy, on any side. To pretend otherwise is at best disingenuous, and at worst a grave danger of recommitting atrocities we should have learned from by now.

Photo credit: Sarah Lemmon, Vancouver.

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posted by Christopher at 1:22 a.m. | link | 1 comments

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Right to protect

Today, Africa Union (AU) leaders met in Addis Ababa to reaffirm that they will be pulling their troops out of the Darfur region this month after the Sudanese government refused to permit them to be replaced by UN peacekeeping forces. Sudan has rejected a UN resolution passed last week aimed at sending a 17 000 peacekeepers to the region to end violence, widely attributed to government support of the Janjaweed militia there, which has seen hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced, and a huge number of women and other vulnerable peoples raped and brutally assaulted over the past several years. Khartoum has stated the AU will only be allowed to remain in Darfur if their mandate is extended beyond 30 September and not as part of a UN force, which it charges is challenging its right to national sovereignty.

UN Resolution 1706, which would have allowed UN forces to take over for the only 7 000 or so AU troops which have been trying to maintain peace in the vast western region of the country, was unanimously passed by the Security Council on August 31, with only three abstentions. Russia, China, and Qatar failed to vote on the resolution, citing concerns over the timing of its enforcement, which is being opposed by the Sudanese government. Instead, Sudan has offered to replace the AU troops with 10 000 members of its own army, a suggestion condemned by human rights groups monitoring the region.

Since the United Nations must have the support of the member nations to which it wishes to send peacekeeping troops, it remains unclear what further action it will pursue. It has been several years since reports began emerging of widespread human rights abuses against mainly 'black' African peoples in the region by the Arab-identifying Janjaweed militia, but action has been slow, when it has emerged at all, and numerous reports have cited increased violence since the government signed a peace agreement with one rebel group in the region in May.

Will the UN take advantage of recent movement to add the 'right to protect' to its mandate in cases of widespread humanitarian abuse? Canada convened the committee which recently suggested adding this responsibility to the duties of its member states, but it seems our own government lacks the moral leadership to take serious initative on enforcing this issue. Systematic violence against ethnic groups on a massive scale is not without precedent, and lessons from Rwanda and Cambodia should have taught the community of nations by now that immediate intervention is necessary to prevent an even greater humanitarian catastrophe.

What has happened to the right to protect? How can we show the people of Darfur there is some bite to our bark, some action coming behind all this rhetoric?

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posted by Christopher at 12:49 a.m. | link | 0 comments
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