The threats: Iran vs. North Korea

Which is the greater threat, North Korea or Iran?

Juan Cole, who teachers Middle East history at the University of Michigan, made an interesting comparison on his web log.

Another comparison. Click to enlarge.

North Korea has eight nuclear weapons.  As Cole noted, its ruler, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, has threatened to attack United States territory.  North Korea has 1,106,000 troops under arms, including 85,000 in its Air Force.   Its armed forces have 3,500 tanks and 8,500 artillery pieces

Iran has zero nuclear weapons.  As Cole pointed out, its ruler, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has stated that Iran will never use nuclear weapons because killing innocent civilians is contrary to Islam.  Iran has 585,000 troops under arms, including 30,000 in its Air Force.  Its armed forces have 1,613 tanks and 3,500 artillery pieces.

Why, then, does the United States treat North Korea’s government with such forbearance while threatening and waging economic warfare against Iran?  Part of the answer is that it is safer to threaten a nation that might someday get nuclear weapons than a country that already has nuclear weapons.  But I don’t think this is the main reason.   The North Korean government must know that the United States military has the power to obliterate its armed forces.

The main reason that the North Korean government has the power to engage in threats and blackmail is that it is perpetually on the brink of political and economic collapse, and that if that happened, the U.S., Chinese and South Korean governments would be faced with the question of how to deal with 25 million desperate starving people in a state of anarchy.  It is easier to tolerate provocations—up to a point—than to deal with that responsibility.   I wish I knew a better answer, but I don’t.

Click on If N. Korea Is the Threat, Why Is All the War Talk About a Weak Iran? for Prof. Cole’s post on his Informed Comment web log.

Negotiations with Iran

Here is good news—maybe.   Representatives of Iran and of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China agreed to meet in Baghdad starting May 23 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.  The negotiations will be based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, which gives countries the right to develop nuclear energy in return for renouncing nuclear weapons.  If Iran can demonstrate that its nuclear program is not a weapons program, then crippling economic sanctions can be lifted—maybe.

Click to enlarge

President Obama has said that he does not rule out an attack on Iran, but only after all efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution have failed.   If negotiations are successful, and Iran’s government really does demonstrate to the satisfaction of the U.S. negotiators that it renounces nuclear weapons, then Obama’s brinksmanship will have proved successful.

But given that the U.S. government attacked Libya after Col. Qadaffi renounced nuclear weapons, and given that the U.S. government refrains from attacking nuclear-armed North Korea, I doubt that I, if I were an Iranian leader, would be willing to give up the possibility of developing a nuclear deterrent.  The main threat to Iran comes from Israel, and Israel is not a party to the talks.

Click on Agreement reached with Iran on formal talks in May for details from McClatchy newspapers.

Click on Did U.S. miss 2010 chance for Iran nuke deal? Turkey says yes for background from McClatchy newspapers.

Click on Iran nuclear talks: A positive first step? for Iranian and Russian as well as U.S. perspectives from Al Jazeera English.

Preliminary talks in Istanbul

Click on Israel’s Secret Staging Ground and False Flag articles by investigative journalist Mark Perry in Foreign Policy magazine about Israeli operations against Iran.

Click on What Iran Can Learn From Kazakhstan for the case for Iranian renunciation of nuclear weapons, and Uranium Double-Standard: The U.S., Kazakhstan and Iran for the case against Kazakhstan as a model.

One ironic aspect of all this is that the talks are being held in Baghdad because the Iranian government considers Iraq a friendly venue.  But that would not be the case had not U.S. military forces overthrown the regime of Iran’s arch-enemy, Saddam Hussein, and replaced it with government headed by Sunni Muslims friendly to the Sunnis of Iran.

Iran’s nuclear deterrent

I think it is likely that Iran is working on nuclear bombs and missiles because that is what I would do if I were Supreme Leader of Iran.  So long as people in the United States or Israel talk about attacking Iran, the rulers of Iran will try to acquire a deterrent.

Jonathan Schell in The Seventh Decade: the New Shape of Nuclear Danger, pointed out that every country that acquired nuclear weapons did so in response to some external threat.

The United States developed nuclear weapons for fear that Nazi Germany was trying to do the same thing.  The Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack by the United States.  Britain and France sought to deter a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union as well as to not be completely dependent on the United States for their defense.  China sought to deter the Soviet Union and the United States.  India sought to deter China as well as to assert great power status.  Pakistan sought to deter India.  North Korea and Israel are countries under siege with a need for deterrents.

It is understandable that the leaders of Iran, surrouned by a nuclear Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and U.S. fleet, would also seek a nuclear deterrent.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the United States.  That is not so.  Russia is the only nation with a sufficient nuclear stockpile to threaten the existence of the United States.  But if Iran had only one nuclear weapon, and a missile capable of delivering it to the United States or Israel, that would be sufficient to deter an attack by either of those countries.  The United States would not be attacking Libya if the Libyan government had nuclear weapons.

I admit I could be wrong about Iran.  I thought Saddam Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction for the same reasons I now think so about Iran – because that’s what I would have done.  I was surprised when Iraq’s nuclear weapons program turned out to be nonexistent.  I may be surprised about Iran, too, but I don’t think so.

The development of nuclear weapons by Iran’s would be a very bad thing.  It would likely spur acquisition of nuclear weapons by Arab nations whose rulers, as the Wikileaks documents revealed, are deeply concerned about the possibility of a nuclear Iran.  The more nations whose leaders have their finger on nuclear buttons, the more likely it is that someday that one of those buttons will be pushed.

But I don’t know what can be done to prevent it.  Possibly Iran would drop its nuclear weapons program if peace could be achieved with the United States, Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors.  I don’t see a path as to how this can be accomplished.  I don’t think sanctions and threats will achieve this purpose.

U.S. electricity from Russian nuclear warheads

I’ve believed for a long time that dismantled nuclear warheads would be a good source of electricity. By reprocessing the nuclear material into fuel, you would (1) alleviate the nuclear waste problem, (2) reduce consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels while (3) refraining from creating greenhouse gasses and (4) reducing the world’s supply of weapons-grade nuclear material.

I was surprised to learn while surfing the Internet this morning that this already is being done. According to a Wikipedia article, 10 percent of U.S. electricity is generated from nuclear material in former Russian warheads.

The return of nuclear power

President Obama earlier this week announced a loan guarantee for the first nuclear power plant in the United States in nearly 30 years. His decision is in line with his State of the Union address in which he called for “a new generation of clean, safe nuclear power plants.”

I guess I am reluctantly in agreement with what he is doing.  If we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, if we want to stop emitting greenhouse gasses that burn up the planet, we have to find alternatives to fossil fuels, and nuclear energy is an alternative source we have available right now.

Nuclear power is dangerous, as the Chernobyl disaster showed, if you don’t follow elementary safety precautions, but like many dangerous activities, it can be carried on safely if operated by people who know what they’re doing and who don’t gamble with margins of safety.  The U.S. Navy runs on nuclear power.  France generates 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and has electricity to export. In contrast, the United States is a net importer of electricity.  This isn’t likely to change any time soon, because a lot of our alternative energy plans, such as development of electric cars, depend on abundant electricity. I of course favor development of photovoltaic electricity, wind energy, geothermal power and other renewable sources with all deliberate speed.

I think that the United States someday will have to rethink its policy on reprocessing of nuclear fuel. This would be a way of reducing the amount of nuclear waste (in terms of total radioactivity; the physical volume would be greater) and of burning up the nuclear material in nuclear weapons.  We discontinued reprocessing under the Carter administration because reprocessing technology can be used for nuclear bombs as well as nuclear power plants, and we wanted to set a good example. It would set a better example to use the nuclear bomb material to produce useful electricity.

Here is commentary on President Obama’s action, and here is some background information on nuclear power in the United States.

President Obama and the real threat to America

I’ve never been afraid of terrorists or terrorism. I am outraged that there are people who think they can come into this country and kill Americans, and we should not rest until they are brought to justice, but they don’t cause me to fear for my existence or my country’s existence. More Americans die in road accidents or gun accidents than have died at the hands of terrorists.

There is, however, a threat to the continued existence of the United States, and it is not in Iran or North Korea or al Qaeda’s caves. It is in the more than 1,355 nuclear warheads (1) on Russian intercontinental missiles targeted at the United States. That is far fewer than at the height of the Cold War, but still enough to leave this country in ruins.

There are two ways this could happen. One is that the Cold War could start up again. This came dangerously close to happening under the Bush administration, when our government tried to form anti-Russian alliances with Georgia and Ukraine and announced plans for a missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The reason that a defense system is provocative is that a sufficiently effective defense system gives you the power to launch an attack without fear (or with less fear) of retaliation. The planned U.S. missile defense system never actually worked, but that wouldn’t have stopped the Russians from questioning our intentions.

The other danger is an accident. There were several occasions, both in the United States and the old Soviet Union, when officers saw false signals of an incoming missile attack. Fortunately they kept their heads and refrained from launching retaliatory strikes, but you can’t be sure this would always happen in the future.

Thanks to President Obama, the nuclear threat – the real threat – is greatly diminished. He canceled the missile defense system and negotiated a new agreement with the Russian Federation with further reductions in the number of warheads and greater cooperation to prevent misunderstanding. The United States and Russia are by far the world’s greatest nuclear powers, and only if we and they work together is there any hope of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

(1) The Russian Federation has just under 13,000 warheads in all, versus about 9,500 for the United States, including 55o on intercontinental missiles. No other nuclear power has as many as 5 percent of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. A clickable link to background information is in the first comment.