Booklist | The Partnership – Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb, Philip Taubman

An important story of important global leaders who aim to get rid of what is arguably the greatest danger to world survival in the 21st century:

Philip Taubman’s fascinating, haunting book, “The Partnership,” is about the drive to abolish nuclear weapons — and, implicitly, about why it will probably fail. Taubman, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times, tells the stories of five American national security mandarins who, in the twilight of their illustrious careers, stunned their peers by campaigning to scrap all nuclear arms. They are not exactly pacifist hippies: Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, Republican secretaries of state; William J. Perry, a Democratic secretary of defense; Sam Nunn, a Democrat who had been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sidney D. Drell, an influential Stanford physicist. Their continuing activism, Taubman writes, “has induced sitting presidents and foreign ministers to embrace ideas not long ago ridiculed as radical and reckless,” and has “powerfully influenced Obama,” who advocates a world without nuclear ­weapons.

These five men had done much to foster a nuclearized world, and had prospered for their contributions to its infernal machinery. Much of “The Partnership” consists of eerie tales of the atomic cold war, charting the upward progress of these grandees. When they broke ranks, Taubman writes, “it was roughly equivalent to John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and Jay Gould calling for the demise of capitalism.”

via The Partnership – Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb – By Philip Taubman – Book Review – NYTimes.com.

Regional multilateralism: The next paradigm in global affairs – GPS

What comes next as a model for dealing with global trouble spots?  Think about more Libya approaches:

In a world of diminished U.S. involvement and unsuccessful multilateralist endeavors, an alternative vision for global engagement is necessary. Instead we are faced with a reluctant China, an unprepared India, an European Union in the midst of a financial debacle and a host of regional powers that focus on their neighborhood rather than claiming a global role. Given these realities, regional multilateralism can serve as the way out from this dead end.

via Regional multilateralism: The next paradigm in global affairs – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.

Pakistan and U.S., Bitter Allies in Fog of War – NYTimes.com

Can the US strategy survive new tensions in the Af-Pak region?

…What Mrs. Clinton called … “fight, talk, build,” meaning the United States and its allies would continue to attack militants in Afghanistan and beyond, seek peace talks with those willing to join a political process and build closer economic ties across the region.

via Pakistan and U.S., Bitter Allies in Fog of War – NYTimes.com.

Booklist | ‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,’ by Matthew White – NYTimes.com

One of the most common quesitons from the general public for international relations is whether the war and conflict is increasing or declining.  Now the librarian Matthew White has compiled and impressive new tome ranking atrocities by body count.  (Grim, and certainly not cocktail party chatter–but very informative.)

Mr. White’s methodology is simple. He gathers every estimate he can find, including some that mainstream historians might reject as unsavory. (“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he writes.) He throws out the highest and lowest numbers and then calculates the median, arriving at what he acknowledges is often just an informed guess. Deaths from famine and disease stemming from armed conflict count, but natural disasters and purely economic events do not. (“There has to be a core of violence,” he explained.) All sources are listed on his Web site, along with darkly witty ruminations on the inherent uncertainty of numbers, especially where what he calls “mass unpleasantness” is involved.

Mr. White’s estimates are “at the high end of the range,” Mr. Pinker said. But he called Mr. White’s transparency about his sources impressive and his methodology statistically sound, in keeping with the scientific tradition of meta-analysis of previous studies.

via ‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,’ by Matthew White – NYTimes.com.

9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?

A poignant post from one of the most important current thinkers on religious studies, Philip Jenkins of Penn State.  He argues that 9/11 didn’t do as much to change our thinking–but we should be able to better understand the Qur’an and its followers, rather than resorting to anti-Islamic tropes:

On reflection, the greatest lesson I learned from the 9/11 horror concerned religion, and specifically how we in the West viewed the great world faiths. And the lessons are as much about Us as about Them. After 9/11, many commentators went beyond focusing on the particular ideology of the perpetrators to speak in terms of a broad clash of cultures and civilizations. They focused intensely on Islam, trying to determine just what features of that faith led its adherents to violence and bloodshed. Many writers have presented Islam as a stark contrast to Christianity and Judaism, and portrayed a struggle of darkness against light.

The Qur’an, in this view, is something like a terrorist manifesto: the book oozes violence, with so many verses about battles, swords and blood. Fanaticism seems hard-wired into the faith. Are the core texts of Islam so repulsive that they will prevent Muslim societies ever evolving to civilized and democratic communities? Why can’t they learn to be like us?

via 9/11: Did the Qur’an really make them do it?.

The Shale Gas Revolution – NYTimes.com

This week’s visit by R. James Woolsey to BYU–whose talk was similar to this one–echoed the insights proffered by Brooks’ column on an energy opportunity:

John Rowe, the chief executive of the utility Exelon, which derives almost all its power from nuclear plants, says that shale gas is one of the most important energy revolutions of his lifetime. It’s a cliché word, Yergin told me, but the fracking innovation is game-changing. It transforms the energy marketplace.

The U.S. now seems to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, which is the cleanest of the fossil fuels. This cleaner, cheaper energy source is already replacing dirtier coal-fired plants. It could serve as the ideal bridge, Amy Jaffe of Rice University says, until renewable sources like wind and solar mature.

via The Shale Gas Revolution – NYTimes.com.

Dealing with Iran

What is a “proportional response” to the alleged assassination plot by Iran against Saudi Arabia on US soil?  Some see overreaction as possible:

Once again, the neoconservatives mount their steeds. They hint that we need another war or at least a little military strike, this time against Iran. They’re pushing to increase military spending; the China threat, you know. They’re also trying to further weaken Obama by charging that he’s losing Iraq to Iran by not keeping U.S. forces there without mentioning, of course, that Iraq is throwing them out.

via Leslie H. Gelb Argues That Neocons Like Bill Kristol Are Back to Warmongering – The Daily Beast.

The Iran Plot

Why would Iran organize such a poorly conceived and executed assassination plot?

Details remain sketchy on the alleged Iranian-sponsored plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States. U.S. officials have linked elements of Irans Quds Force — a special branch of the Revolutionary Guards military organization — to the scheme, but have not clearly identified to what extent Irans leadership was involved as one anonymous official admitted to the Washington Post, “We dont have specific knowledge” that the head of the Quds Force was involved. Without knowing further details, it is hard to fathom why Iran would pursue such an attack or how this action would advance Irans core strategic interests.

via Worst. Plot. Ever. – By Afshon Ostovar | Foreign Policy.

The skeptic, Max Fisher, wondered the same thing early on–as headlines were breaking:

The Iranian leadership, for all their twisted human rights abuses and policies that often serve the regime at the cost of actual Iranians, are not idiots. Though they use terrorism as a foreign policy tool, the attacks in Iraq and Lebanon and elsewhere have clearly been driven by just that — a cool-headed pragmatic desire to further Iranian foreign policy interests. Unifying the U.S. and Saudi Arabia at a time when they are drifting apart with a plot that would galvanize American publics and policymakers to support Saudi Arabia, and all without actually doing much strategic damage to either country, would be monumentally stupid. They’ve made serious, ideology-driven mistakes before — as government often do — but this plot comes so far out of left field that it should raise more questions than accusations.

If they would go through all the trouble to organize a bombing attack on U.S. soil — no easy thing to do — why target someone so low-level? For that matter, why launch an attack on U.S. soil at all, something Iran has never done in the tumultuous decade since September 11? Why now, as opposed to, for example, during the height of the Iraq war? Why incur the wrath of the U.S. now, so soon after releasing the U.S. hikers detained in Tehran? (Their release was a modest and long overdue concession, but one that suggests the path of Iranian diplomacy.)

via Would Iran Really Want to Blow Up the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S.? – Max Fisher – International – The Atlantic.

Steven Walz wonders if this shows how weakIran really is.

Secret Bid to Arm Qaddafi Shows Tensions in China Government – NYTimes.com

To illustrate who tricky arms regulation and agreements can be, China’s erstwhile involvement arming Qadaffi may show how one hand in China doesn’t know–or can’t fully control–what the other hand is doing.

At a United Nations conference in Indonesia this summer, an official of the agency that oversees China’s weapons industry ticked off the hurdles that any proposal to sell Chinese weapons abroad must clear. Among them: arms sales must not alter another nation’s internal security. They must not violate United Nations arms embargoes. And they must win government approval.

via Secret Bid to Arm Qaddafi Shows Tensions in China Government – NYTimes.com.

R2P: Is Libya the Start of a New Era?

What will we learn from the experience in Libya?  European security investments?  A new NATO?  More multilateral engagements (the “responsibility to protect“) with the US “leading from behind”?  Steven Erlanger discusses:

Although Washington took a back seat in the war, which the Obama administration looked at skeptically from the start, the United States still ran the initial stages, in particular the destruction of Libya’s air defenses, making it safe for its NATO colleagues to fly. The United States then provided intelligence, refueling and more precision bombing than Paris or London want to acknowledge. Inevitably, then, NATO air power and technology, combined with British, French and Qatari “trainers” working “secretly” with the rebels on the ground, have defeated the forces, some of them mercenary, of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The question, however, is whether European members of NATO will ever decide to embark on such an adventure again.

via What Libya’s Lessons Mean for NATO – NYTimes.com.