Global News Journal

What’s really behind Merkel’s nuclear U-turn?

The consensus view in Germany is that Angela Merkel’s abrupt reversal on nuclear energy after Fukushima was a transparent ploy to shore up support in an important state election in Baden-Wuerttemberg. If indeed that was her intention (she denies any political motive) then she miscalculated horribly. Her party was ousted from government in B-W on Sunday after running the prosperous southern region for 58 straight years. But what if Merkel was really thinking longer-term — ie beyond the state vote to the next federal election in 2013? After the Japan catastrophe she may well have realised that her chances of getting elected to a third term were next-to-nil if she didn’t pivot quickly on nuclear. There are two good reasons why that is probably a safe assumption. First is the extent of anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany. A recent poll for Stern magazine showed nearly two in three Germans would like to see the country’s 17 nuclear power plants shut down within 5 years.  The nuclear issue was the decisive factor in the B-W election. And you can bet it will play an important role in the next national vote — even if it is 2-1/2 years away. The second reason why the reversal looks like a good strategic decision from a political point of view is the dire state of Merkel’s junior partner in government — the Free Democrats. It was the strength of the FDP which vaulted her to a second term in September 2009. But now it looks like their weakness could be her undoing in 2013.  Merkel probably needs the FDP to score at least 10 percent in the next vote to give her a chance of renewing her “black-yellow” coalition. Right now the FDP is hovering at a meagre 5 percent and it is difficult to see how they double that anytime soon. The nuclear shift widens Merkel’s options in one fell swoop. Suddenly the issue that made a coalition between Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Greens unthinkable at the federal level has vanished. Her party set a precedent by hooking up with the Greens in the city-state of Hamburg in 2008. Now she has more than two years to lay the foundations for a similar partnership in Berlin. By then voters may see Merkel’s nuclear U-turn in a different light. And only then will it be truly clear if it was a huge political mistake, as the Baden-Wuerttemberg vote suggests, or a prescient strategic coup.

from Reuters Investigates:

ElBaradei: From nuclear diplomat to Cairo politics

Who is Mohamed ElBaradei, the professional Egyptian opposition figure who joined the ranks of disaffected Eypgtians to topple President Hosni Mubarak after thirty years in power?  Does the 68-year-old diplomat and lawyer have what it takes to become Egypt's next president if it holds free and fair elections? 

Louis Charbonneau's special report takes a close look at ElBaradei's performance while at the helm of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), where he stood toe-to-toe with the Bush administration over Iraq and Iran. It tells how he survived a plot by hawkish U.S. politician John Bolton to oust him and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 jointly with the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.  It looks into his questionable record as a manager while showing that he may have what it takes to lead Egypt -- if he wants the job. 

 To read this story in multimedia PDF format click here

from Afghan Journal:

India, Pakistan and their growing nuclear arsenal

India and Pakistan exchanged a list of each other's nuclear installations on Saturday like they have done at the start of each year under a 1988 pact in which the two sides agreed not to attack these facilities. That is the main confidence building measure in the area of nuclear security between the two countries, even though their nuclear weapons  programmes  have expanded significantly since then.   Indeed for some years now there is a  growing body of international opinion that holds that Pakistan has stepped up production of fissile material, and may just possibly hold more nuclear weapons than its much larger rival, India.  

Which is remarkable given that the Indian nuclear programme is driven by the need for deterrence against much bigger armed-China, the third element in the South Asian nuclear tangle. The Indians who conducted a nuclear test as early as 1974, thus,may be behind not just the Chinese, but also Pakistan in terms of the number of warheads, fissile material and delivery systems.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in a global report in August 2010 estimated that India had assembled 60 to 80 warheads and produced enough fissile material for 60-105 nuclear warheads. Pakistan is estimated to have assembled 70–90 warheads and produced missile material for as many as 90 warheads. China's arsenal was estimated at 240 nuclear warheads.  Here's a PDF of the report prepared by   Robert S.Norris and Hans M.Kristensen.  

The majority of India’s and Pakistan’s warheads are not yet operationally deployed, the researchers said.  Both countries are believed to be increasing their stockpiles although the competition is nowhere near the intensity of the race between the United States and Russia during the Cold War. Indeed even today the combined total of Indian and Pakistan warheads will only be slightly more than the number carried by a single U.S. Trident submarine.

Nevertheless the race to expand nuclear weapons programme as also missile development adds another layer of instability in South Asia, with Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of the turmoil and home to al Qaedaand allied militant groups. The question is why now ? Why is Pakistan seeking to expand its arsenal ? Is this a numbers game ?  Are the rivals getting sucked into a nuclear arms race without  intending to ?

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear affairs expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,  told me in a conversation last month there was a "budding arms race" on between India and Pakistan, although nowhere near the scale of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union.

from Afghan Journal:

Denuclearising Pakistan

At about the time WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including one related to a secret attempt to remove enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor, a top Pakistani military official held a briefing for journalists that focused on U.S.-Pakistan ties.

Dawn's Cyril Almeida has written a piece based on the officer's comments made on the condition of anonymity, and they offer the closest glimpse you can possibly get of the troubled ties between the allies.

First off, as the officer says, Pakistan has gone from being the "most sanctioned ally" to the "most bullied ally" of the United States. Presumably the sanctions that the officer is referring to relate to those imposed  on Pakistan following its nuclear tests in 1998. And as for the most bullied ally the other comments offer a clue: 

These include and I quote from Almeida's piece:

"The U.S. still has a transactional relationship with Pakistan; the U.S. is interested in perpetuating a state of controlled chaos; and perhaps most explosively given the WikiLeaks revelations, the "real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearise Pakistan."

U.S. and Pakistani security interests aren't the same including over Afghanistan and India, the military officer says. And while Islamabad understood America's growing focus on North Waziristan, it had to first settle South Waziristan and also factor in the blowback any operation in the area would stoke. The officer intriguingly also talks about indications that parties in the conflict in Afghanistan can renounce al Qaeda and even ask it to leave Afghanistan. In other words he is suggesting  that the Taliban are  ready to break ties with al Qaeda  and if so that removes a big obstacle to peace talks.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Wikileaks on Pakistan

In the State Department cables released by Wikileaks and so far reported, the most eye-catching as far as Pakistan is concerned is a row with Washington over nuclear fuel.

According to the New York Times, the cables show:

"A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

The Pakistan Army is deeply sensitive about any questions on the safety of its nuclear weapons.  The country is also often awash with conspiracy theories accusing the Americans of harbouring secret plans to dismantle the nuclear weapons.

That said, the row reported by the NYT appeared to have been about HEU at a nuclear research reactor rather than the weapons themselves, so it may turn out to be less dramatic than it appears.  Pakistan's nuclear weapons are considered to be well-guarded although analysts have cited a risk of militants trying to seize nuclear material which they might use to make a dirty bomb. (For a factbox on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, see here).

Of potentially huge significance for Pakistan are cables, reported in The Guardian, saying that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.

"The Saudi king was recorded as having 'frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme', one cable stated. 'He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,' the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008." The Guardian reported.

from Reuters Investigates:

In case you missed them

Just because it was summer, doesn't mean we weren't busy here at Reuters. Here are a few of our recent special reports that you might have missed.

Tracking Iran's nuclear money trail to Turkey. U.N. correspondent Lou Charbonneau -- who used to cover the IAEA for Reuters --  followed the money to Turkey where an Iranian bank under U.S. and EU sanctions is operating freely. Nice to see the New York Times follow up on this today, and the Washington Post also quizzed Turkey's president about it.

Blue-collar, unemployed and seeing red -- Chicago correspondent James Kelleher went on the road for this story about the long-term unemployed and what that means for Obama and the Democrats at November's midterm elections.

Even though he's been forced to move back in with his parents and has virtually no income, Stevenson opposes Obama's proposal to let some tax cuts for the wealthy, dating back to George W. Bush's presidency, expire at year's end in order to raise revenue and reduce the deficit. 

"How is more people, keeping more of the money they earn, bad for the economy?" he said. "The answer is -- it's not."   

from Afghan Journal:

Pakistan’s Zardari in China; nuclear deal in grasp

(File picture of President Zardari in China)

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is in China this week, making good his promise to visit the "all weather ally" every three months. During his previous trips, his hosts have sent him off to the provinces to see for himself the booming growth there, but this trip may turn out be a lot more productive.

Zardari  may well return with a firm plan by China to build two reactors at Pakistan's Chashma nuclear plant, as my colleague in Beijing  reports in this article, overriding concern in Washington, New Delhi and other capitals that this undermined global non-proliferation objectives.

It's a bit of a nuclear poker going on in the region and Afghanistan as the new battleground between the regional players cannot remain untouched.

The proposed Chinese nuclear transfer to Pakistan follows a groundbreaking deal that the United States and India sealed two years ago which allows New Delhi to access U.S. nuclear technology and fuel while retaining the right to pursue a military programme.  It was a deal that raised eyebrows all around, overturning decades of U.S-led efforts to wear down India's resistance to nuclear disarmament pacts through a combination of tough technology  sanctions and offers of a a strategic relationship designed to appeal to New Delhi's global aspirations.

In the event, Washington which invaded Iraq on the grounds that it was developing nuclear weapons, and has tightened the squeeze on Iran for its nuclear activities,  virtually gave New Delhi pretty much what it has coveted all along. The right to pursue a weapons programme as well as complete access to international nuclear technology to boost civilian  nuclear power for an energy-starved nation. It was as if the Pope had thrown the Bible away when it came to India, as an Indian diplomat long used to haranguing by U.S. officials over the country's nuclear programmes told me back then.

Volcano chaos: A pointer to potential Iran/Gulf smoke disruption?

As if they didn’t have enough to think about, planners trying to pin down the unintended consequences of a strike on Iran may be required to reorder their lengthy worry list.

The concern? Iceland’s volcano, or rather, the vivid reminder the exploding mountain provided to governments of the importance of civil emergency planning.

The ash clouds and the flight chaos it produced may be a foretaste, writ large, of the disruption to daily life in the Gulf that could temporarily result from military conflict and its aftermath in the area, some analysts say.

The Kuwait oil fires of the 1990-91 Gulf conflict provide an example of the confusion and damage that can result from smoke and pollution, quite apart from the popular anxiety caused by war itself, write Riad Kahwaji and Theodore Karasik of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. In January, 1991, Iraqi forces torched hundreds of Kuwaiti oil fields, creating clouds of heavy smoke across the northern Gulf in the last moments of the conflict. Saddam Hussein’s action was mainly political, not military: in what Kuwaitis perceived as a monumental act of spite, he was laying waste to an asset he was forced to relinquish.

But the impact was dramatic. Then the world’s worst oilfield disaster, the problem was worsened by winter weather, with oil-laden rain infesting engines in the air and on the ground, they recall.

The clouds did not significantly affect military operations, which by then were virtually finished. But they caused considerable costs, complications and anxieties in the aftermath, temporarily denting confidence among some in the resilience of Kuwait’s post-war recovery efforts.

The fires burned for nine months, blotting out the sun in places around the northern Gulf and causing record low temperatures.  Hundreds of tonnes of chemical compounds known as polyaromatic hydrocarbons and metal particles were propelled into the atmosphere in oilfire smoke or onto the desert floor in spilled crude oil that formed lakes.

from Afghan Journal:

When India-Pakistan wargames become real

(Pakistani army tanks in exercises in Bhawalpur sector. Pic by Christopher Allbritton)

Pakistan is conducting its biggest military exercises in 21 years and at the weekend thousands of troops backed by fighter jets took part in a mock battle to repel a simulated Indian military advance and inflict heavy casualties. The manoeuvres were designed to test a riposte to India's Cold Start doctrine of a rapid and deep thrust into Pakistan in a simulated environment, but you are never far from real action on the heavily militarised border between the two countries.

On Sunday, as the mock battle unfolded in the deserts of eastern Pakistan, the two armies were engaged in a real exchange of fire a few hundred miles away, along the border in Punjab. Both sides reported the firing in the Shakargarh sector and as is the norm blamed the other for starting it. It didn't last long and by the standards of Indo-Pak artillery duels it was a blip. But what is interesting is it took place along a settled section of the border as distinct from cross-border firing along the Line of Control separating the two armies in disputed Kashmir.  Shooting across the international border has been rare, although there have been incidents in January this year and in July and September in 2009.

NightWatch intelligence, which closely tracks developments across South Asia, says the Shakargarh sector carries  the weight of history and perhaps there is  a message behind the shooting. This is the site of a decisive battle during the 1971 India-Pakistan War in which Indian rocket launcher units destroyed Pakistani army armoured brigades ending hostilities in that sector. Firing in the location is always a reminder of December 1971. So the question is were the Indians trying to remind the Pakistanis about that battle nearly four decades ago even as Pakistan carried out the wargames named Azm-e-Nau 3 or New Resolve 3?

India, Pakistan wargames have in the past caused jitters especially when thousands of troops are massed near the border along with heavy armour and you are not sure whether they are only meant for exercises or is it a preparation for a real war. Back in 1987, India conducted Brass Tacks, the largest military exercise of its kind across South Asia in the deserts of Rajasthan a few hundred miles from the Pakistan border.

The exercises included the bulk of Indian Army and its mechanised and armoured formations; in short all the paraphernalia for a real war, concentrated on Pakistan's sensitive border areas. For a Pakistani, it would seem the ideal location from which to launch a cross-border operation into the Pakistani state of Sindh that could cut Pakistan in half.

from Afghan Journal:

Standing by your friends:India, U.S. push ahead with nuclear deal

For all the hand-wringing in India over getting sidelined by the United States in its regional strategy,  the two countries have gone ahead and just completed an important deal on the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from reactors to be built in India.

The agreement is a key step in the implementation of the India-U.S.  civil nuclear pact which grants India access to nuclear fuel and technology, even though it has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Under the agreement India can reprocess U.S.-originated nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards which in itself is a symbolic concession, according to the Washington Post. It said that the Indians were a bit concerned about the idea of American officials running around their  nuclear reactors , a sort of  "a symbolic, sovereignty issue" as  a source in the U.S. nuclear industry said. They would rather submit to oversight by the IAEA, which thus far is a model the United States has only followed for nuclear collaboration with  Europe and Japan.

Considering that America has gone to war in Iraq on the grounds that it was building weapons of mass destruction and is at this time pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme, it is indeed a big deal. It can  also potentially reshape the strategic landscape in South Asia with the world virtually granting legitimacy to India as a nuclear weapons state while denying that to Pakistan.

Pushing the accord through in the U.S. has  been a "wrenching affair" as the Indian Express put it,  riding against the current of proliferation concerns worldwide. Why should the world be making an exception for India just as it is breathing down hard on Iran and North Korea to roll back their nuclear programmes ? Where, after all, is the iron-clad guarantee that India won't divert some of the  plutonium extracted from the imported spent fuel to its strategic weapons programme, the experts ask.  Blatant double standards, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

No wonder Pakistan asked for a similar deal at high-level talks in Washington last week aimed at putting their tempestuous ties on a more even keel.

And so in that sense, the India-US nuclear deal, really the crown jewel of a strategic partnership, will be the elephant in the room as Washington, Islamabad, and New Delhi tackle a complicated three-way relationship in one of the world's most unstable regions.