EFTA00639310.pdf

From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen ‹ > Subject: March 28 update Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:38:22 +0000 28 March, 2013 Article 1. The Washington Post Obama appeals to Israel's conscience Fareed Zakaria Article 2. The Washington Post Obama's pragmatic approach to Mideast David Ignatius Article 3. The National Interest Why Stay in the Middle East? Leon Hadar Article 4. The Wall Street Journal Stopping an Undetectable Iranian Bomb David Albright Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittrie Article 5. The Wall Street Journal How Iran Could Get the Bomb Overnight Edward Jay Epstein Article 6. Los Angeles Times 'Star Wars' today: What would Reagan do? Graham Allison Article 7. The Economist Can India become a great power? Arlicic I. The Washington Post Obama aibeals to Israel's Fareed Zakaria 1 March 27, 2013 -- As a piece of rhetoric, Barack Obama's speech to college students in Jerusalem was a triumph. He finally convinced Israel and its supporters that "HE GETS US," as one of them e-mailed me. "In EFTA00639310 his Kishkas [gut], he gets us!" But Obama also spoke more bluntly about Israel's occupation and the case for a Palestinian state than any U.S. president has in the past. Oratory aside, Obama has recognized and employed the strongest — and perhaps only — path toward peace and a Palestinian state: an appeal to Israel's conscience. For 40 years, those who have tried to push Israel toward making concessions have pointed to dangers and threats. Israel is surrounded by enemies, the argument goes, and the only way to ease that hostility is to give the Palestinians a state. Palestinian terrorism will make daily life in Israel unbearable, another variant explained, and Israel will have to settle this problem politically. These assumptions undergirded the peace process and Obama's approach in his first term. The argument reflected reality in the 1980s and 1990s, when Israel faced an array of powerful Arab states with large armies - Iraq, Syria — formally dedicated to its destruction. The Soviet Union backed these regimes with cash and arms and ceaselessly drummed up international opposition to the Jewish state. Israelis lived with constant Palestinian terror, which created a siege mentality within the country. The situation today, however, is transformed in every sense. The Soviet Union is dead. Iraq and Syria have been sidelined as foes. The Arab world is in upheaval, which produces great uncertainty but has also weakened every Arab country. They all are focused on internal issues of power, legitimacy and survival. The last thing any of them can afford is a confrontation with the country that has become the region's dominant power. The data underscore this. Israel's per capita gross domestic product is now nine times that of Egypt, according to the International Monetary Fund's most recent figures; six times that of Jordan; and nearly three times that of Turkey. It is almost 50 percentgreater than Saudi Arabia's per capita GDP. Israeli military expenditures are larger than those of all its neighbors combined, and then there are its technological and qualitative superiorities and its alliance with the world's dominant military power. Israel's highly effective counterterrorism methods, including the wall separating Palestinians and Israelis and the "iron dome," which increasingly shields Israelis from missiles, have largely made Palestinian terrorism something EFTA00639311 that is worried about and planned against but not actually experienced by most Israelis. Even the much-discussed "demographic threat" is a threat only if Israel sees it as such — something the country's new breed of politicians, such as Naftali Bennett, have cynically grasped. After all, Israel has ruled millions of Palestinians without offering them citizenship or a state for 40 years. There is no tipping point at which this becomes logistically or technically unsustainable. Walls, roads and checkpoints would work for 4 million Palestinians just as they do for 3 million. In a sense, both hard-line supporters of Israel and advocates of peace have clung to the notion of the Jewish state as deeply vulnerable. For Likudniks, this demonstrated that Israel was at risk and needed constant support. For peaceniks, it proved that peace was a vital necessity. But Israel's strength and security are changing the country's outlook. Don't look only at the tough talk coming from the new right. As columnist and author Ari Shavit notes, the country has turned its attention from survival to social, political and economic justice. (January's election results confirmed this trend.) And while these seem, at first, domestic affairs, they will ultimately lead to a concern for justice in a broader sense and for the rights of Palestinians. Obama's speech appealed to this aspect of Israel's psyche and grounded it deeply in Jewish values: "Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition but also in the idea that a people deserve to be free in a land of their own." Then, applying that idea to Israel's longtime adversaries, he said: "Look at the world through [Palestinian] eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day." Having tried pressure, threats and tough talk, Obama has settled on a new strategy: appealing to Israel as a liberal democracy and to its people's sense of conscience and character. In the long run, this is the most likely path to peace and a Palestinian state. Anicic 2. EFTA00639312 The Washington Post Obama's pragmatic approach David Ignatius March 27, 2013 -- Here's the coldblooded calculation at work as President Obama shapes his foreign-policy agenda: If he took "full ownership" of the Syria problem through direct military intervention, that's probably all he could accomplish during his second term — and even then, he might fail in reconciling that country's feuding sects. So Obama is moving instead toward a more pragmatic approach in Syria, with the CIA playing a central role, supplemented by the State Department and the U.S. military. The United States will train Syrian rebels and help build governance in areas liberated from the regime of President Bashar al- Assad. Washington will work harder to coordinate policy with the key regional powers — Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — whose conflicting agendas have threatened in recent days to pull the Syrian opposition apart. But Obama won't make the all-encompassing commitment in Syria that some want because he fears it would devour the remaining years of his presidency. This pragmatic line on foreign policy was evident during Obama's trip to the Middle East this month. Though the president is often criticized for his passive, "leading from behind" style, he made some notable advances on the trip. The challenge, as always for Obama, will be to follow through with coherent "from the front" leadership. Here are three strategic gains that emerged from the trip: Obama breathed a little life back into an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that had all but expired. He did this largely by the force of his March 21 speech in Israel. What he accomplished was the diplomat's trick of riding two horses at once: The speech was a love letter to Israel, as one commentator noted, and it was also a passionate evocation of the Palestinians' plight, and the need to "look at the world through their eyes." Obama pulled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward the U.S. position on military action against Iran. Netanyahu said that "if Iran decides to go for a nuclear weapon — that is, to actually manufacture the EFTA00639313 weapon — then . . . it will take them about a year." He said the United States and Israel share "a common assessment" of Iran. This sounded close to agreement with Obama's position that the trigger for a military strike would be an Iranian breakout toward a bomb; that's quite different from the "zone of immunity" arguments Netanyahu was making last year, which viewed Iran's very position of enrichment technology as the threat. These exchanges demonstrated that Obama is stronger politically than he was a year ago and Netanyahu is weaker. The Israeli prime minister is now trying to associate himself with Obama's Iran policy, rather than pressuring him. Obama brokered an important reconciliation between Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With the region in turmoil, this was a matter of vital national interest for both Israel and Turkey, but it took Obama to provide the personal link that made it happen. This was a payoff for Obama's cultivation of Erdogan since 2010, and for his "reset" with Netanyahu. Syria remains the test of whether Obama can, forgive the term, "lean in" more during his second term. Obama has been slow to see the dangers of U.S. passivity there: For months he let things drift in Syria; the United States had a nominal commitment to strengthening command-and-control within the opposition but no real policy on the ground to accomplish it. Obama is now said to understand the risk that Syria's sectarian conflict will spread to Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan if the United States doesn't take stronger action. The White House is eager to work with Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss, the commander of the Free Syrian Army, on training, logistics and other priorities. The administration recognizes that it may need "safe zones," perhaps protected by air defenses, to train Syrian rebels inside the country rather than in Jordan and Turkey. The president is still said to resist the simple formula of "arm the rebels," but he seems close to partnering with friendly intelligence services in the region on what would be a major covert action program, reminiscent of Afghanistan in the 1980s, with all the attendant risks. In framing this project, M be wise to bring in some CIA veterans who have experience running similar programs, pronto. Obama hasn't had a personality transplant. He's still likely to be slow and deliberate. But the Middle East trip showed that he has built some political and diplomatic capital and is starting to use it wisely. EFTA00639314 Anicic 3. The National Interest MILyi Stay in the Middle East? Leon Hadar March 27, 2013 -- Bashing the critics of their foreign-policy agenda as "isolationists" has become the last refuge of military interventionists and global crusaders. The tactic helps sidetrack the debate by putting the onus on their opponents—those skeptical of regime change here, there and everywhere—to disprove the charge that they want Americans to shun the rest of the world. And now proponents of maintaining American military hegemony in the Middle East have been applying a similar technique, accusing those who call for a debate on U.S. interests and policies in that region of advocating retreat and appeasement. Like the accusation of "isolationism," the suggestion that a reassessment of current U.S. policies in the Middle East amounts to geostrategic retrenchment is part of an effort to shut down debate and maintain the status quo. But questioning the dominant U.S. Middle East paradigm, which assumes that Americans have the interest and the obligation to secure a dominant political-military status in the region, now goes beyond strategic and economic calculations being debated by foreign-policy wonks in Washington. Most Americans have only basic knowledge about the Middle East and U.S. interests there, beyond words that trigger a visceral fear ("oil" and "Israel" and "terrorism"). But most of them are now telling pollsters that they want to see U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible, are opposed to new U.S.-led regime change and nation building in the Middle East, and are skeptical about the utility of Washington taking charge of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." Indeed, you don't have to be a deep strategic thinker to conclude that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major military and diplomatic fiasco (no more Iraqs, please); that Washington exerts very little influence on the political weather (where it's "spring" or "winter") in the Arab EFTA00639315 World, a place where they lost that loving feeling for America a long time ago; or that Israelis and Palestinians are not going to live in peace and harmony anytime soon, even if President Obama would spend the rest of his term engaged in diplomatic psychotherapy sessions with them at Camp David. It is becoming quite obvious to most Americans that sustaining the foundations of the Pax Americana in the Middle East is no longer cost- effective. Especially at a time when many members of the middle class have yet to recover from the economic devastation of the Great Recession and their representatives in Washington cannot agree on how to manage the ballooning federal deficit. Reversing the classic model of foreign-policy making (leaders decide and then the public follows), leaders and the experts in Washington have been the ones doing the catch-up when it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East as they muddle through the default position of gradual disengagement. At the same time, the Washington consensus that America should always be ready to "do something" to resolve the problems of the Middle East has been shuddering. Consider President Obama's reluctance to intervene in Syria, to go to war with Iran or jump into another Israeli-Palestinian peace exercise, or signs that the neoconservatives are starting to lose their hold over the GOP's foreign-policy agenda. The old status quo is still alive, but kicking less frequently. But the growing public sentiment against military interventionism in the Middle East cannot be a substitute for a debate in Washington over U.S. policy in the region. Public opinion tends to be fickle and another 9/11-like terrorist attack or a military confrontation with Tehran could reverse the current trend of disengagement. Moreover, the current reactive policies being pursued by the Obama administration in the Middle East (not to mention the dominant Republican approach) are still based on an old paradigm that evolved during the Cold War. This strategy assumes that only U.S. military power can contain global and regional aggressors (the Soviet Union during the Cold War; Iran and Al Qaeda today). It also demands that Washington secure access to the oil markets of the Middle East and ensure the survival of Israel. But old paradigms don't die, and unlike old generals, they don't just fade away. The end of the Cold War should have provided an opportunity for EFTA00639316 the United States to reassess its Middle East paradigm. There was no more a Soviet Union seeking to dominate the Middle East, and Washington's European and Asian allies were strong economic powers that should have been ready to protect their access to oil—instead of continuing to act as "free riders" on U.S. military protection. At the same time, Israel was in the process of negotiating peace with the Palestinians (the "Oslo Process") and transforming into a strong economic and military power. But the power of inertia—along with with the influences of the entrenched bureaucracies and powerful interest groups like the military-industrial complex, the "Israel Lobby" and the oil companies—combined to keep the U.S. Middle East paradigm in place, triggered anti-American terrorism and drew the United States into new limited (Iraq War I) and expansive (Iraq War II) military interventions. All this played into the hands of the nationalist and religious Greater Israel forces in the Jewish State. At the same time, continuing U.S. military intervention only helped radicalize the Arab World and eroded the power of the military dictators and monarchs allied with Washington. This made it even more difficult to secure its hegemonic positions in the region while diverting military resources from other parts of the world—in particular East Asia, where China has emerged as a major global challenge to U.S. interests. Thus withdrawing from Iraq and reducing the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East would make sense only as part of new U.S. strategy. This new approach must encourage regional powers like Turkey, Egypt, Iran, the Arab Gulf States and Israel to operate under the assumption that the United States would not be there to micromanage the balance of power in the region. It also should provide incentives for Washington's European allies to protect their interests in a region that is after all in their strategic backyard. Moreover, the U.S. economy has never been dependent on oil imports from the Middle East (it now receives about 14 percent of its energy supplies from the region). There is no reason why America should continue to spend its resources to provide economic competitors like China with free military protection for access to Middle Eastern oil. Israel would also have to adjust to the new realities of U.S. power in the Middle East. Israelis need to recognize that Washington would not be able EFTA00639317 to bail them out if and when they behave irresponsibly: U.S. support cannot be a substitute for reaching an agreement with the Palestinians and being integrated into the Middle East. The United States could continue to act as the "balancer of last resort" in the Middle East, working together with regional and global powers to help strengthen stability and promote economic prosperity in the region. But it cannot and should not sustain the current status quo there anymore. Leon Hadar, senior analyst at Wikistrat, a geostrategic consulting group, is the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. Artick 4. The Wall Street Journal Stopping an Undetectable Iranian Bomb David Albright, Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittric March 26, 2013 -- Iran's nuclear program dominated last week's meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A key challenge for both leaders: how to stop Iran's rapid advance toward "critical capability." Critical capability means the point at which Iran could dash to produce enough weapons-grade uranium or separated plutonium for one bomb so quickly that the International Atomic Energy Agency or a Western intelligence service would be unable to detect the dash until it is over. Mr. Obama has implicitly threatened to use force, if necessary, to prevent Iran from "obtaining" nuclear weapons. But once Tehran is perched at critical capability, it could use the threat of an undetectable breakout to enjoy many of the strategic benefits of having a bomb without crossing Mr. Obama's red line. Once Iran has produced sufficient fissile material— weapons-grade uranium or separated plutonium—it will be much more difficult for the West to stop Iran from completing the process of actually building nuclear weapons.Producing fissile material is the most technically demanding step in building a nuclear bomb, and the hardest to hide. According to IAEA officials, Iran already knows enough to create the non- fissile parts of a basic nuclear bomb. With this knowledge, a country such EFTA00639318 as Iran could manufacture nuclear weapon components, or even assemble complete bombs, in small, secret facilities. That is one reason why U.S. intelligence was surprised by how quickly China, India, North Korea, Pakistan and the Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons—and underestimated Iraq's progress in 1990 and overestimated it in 2002. How short would Iran's fissile-material dash need to be so as to be undetectable? Currently, the IAEA inspects two Iranian enrichment facilities on average once a week, and a third facility every two weeks on average. With this rate of inspections, Iran would need to produce 25 kilograms of weapons- grade uranium (enough for one bomb) from its stockpiles of lower enriched uranium in less than one week. The window might be widened to two or three weeks if Tehran blocked one or two inspections on the pretext of an "accident" or a "protest." This brings us to the critical component for a fissile-material dash: the quality and quantity of Iran's centrifuges. Tehran has in the last year installed about 5,000 additional IR-1 centrifuges, the biggest increase in years. It has also begun installing IR-2m centrifuges, which are reportedly three to five times as productive in enriching uranium as the currently standard IR-1 models. All of Iran's centrifii nstallation- and uranium enrichment-related activity violates multiple M. Security Council resolutions, which since 2006 have required that "Iran shall without further delay suspend . . . all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities." We estimate that Iran, on its current trajectory, will by mid-2014 be able to dash to fissile material in one to two weeks unless its production of 20%- enriched uranium is curtailed. If the number or efficiency of Iran's centrifuges unexpectedly increases, or if Tehran has a secret operational enrichment site, Tehran could reach critical capability before mid-2014. The date could be delayed, however, if Iran encounters unexpected difficulties in centrifuge operation or can no longer import centrifuge equipment and materials from China and elsewhere. At nuclear talks in Kazakhstan in February, Western negotiators reportedly focused on persuading Iran to curtail its production of 20%-enriched uranium and to export some of its existing stock. These goals are important but insufficient. As Iran increases the quality and quantity of its spinning centrifuges to the point of critical capability, a moratorium on 20%- enriched uranium will matter less and less. It will become easier for Tehran EFTA00639319 —after using some pretext to renege on a 20% moratorium—to rapidly make up for lost time in accumulating enough 20% enriched uranium that, if further enriched to weapons-grade (or about 90% enriched), would be enough for a bomb. Once Tehran had enough 20% material for a bomb, it could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for that bomb in a week or two. Given Iran's current course, the U.S. and its allies should immediately impose maximum pressure on Iran, including by intensifying economic sanctions and cracking down on Tehran's illicit imports of centrifuge equipment and materials. In addition to curtailing Iran's production and stockpile of 20%-enriched uranium, any interim deal must verifiably prohibit Iran from upgrading the type and increasing the number of its operational centrifuges. More frequent IAEA inspections at key Iranian sites are also essential. Mr. Obama warned last fall that Iran could eventually achieve "breakout capacity, which means that we would not be able to intervene in time to stop their nuclear program." If Iran achieves breakout capacity, the United States, by President Obama's admission, would not have sufficient insight into Iran's progress to intervene "in time" to prevent it from completing the process of obtaining nuclear weapons. Washington and its allies must insist now that Iran verifiably stop increasing the number and quality of its centrifuges. Anything short of that will leave Iran far too close to an undetectable breakout capacity. Mr. Albright is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Mr. Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University. The Wall Street Journal How Iran Could Get the Bomb Overnight Edward Jay Epstein March 27, 2013 -- The West has tried to stop Iran from manufacturing nuclear weapons by diplomacy, sanctions and cybersabotage, and with the threat of military action if Tehran crosses red lines in moving toward the EFTA00639320 final stages of making a bomb. If Iran becomes discouraged in its efforts, an easier and more immediately dangerous option is available: buying nuclear weapons from North Korea. When it comes to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, the Iranian regime is in a bind. To further enrich its current stockpile of lowly-enriched uranium hexafluoride gas to weapons-grade material, Tehran would need to reconfigure its centrifuges. Since those centrifuges are closely monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran would have to expel the inspectors, explicitly breaking out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Then it would take four to six months—according to the head of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Studies, Amos Yadlin—to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb. During this interval, Tehran would effectively invite an attack by the U.S. and Israel, which have repeatedly stated that they will not allow Iran to produce fissile fuel for weapons. Since the U.S. has munitions capable of destroying all of Iran's centrifuges above ground at Natanz and sealing off the entrances to its underground facilities at Fordo—plus the Stealth bombers to deliver these knockout punches—Iran would likely lose the means to manufacture nuclear weapons before it could make a single one. But what if Iran buys one or two nuclear warheads from North Korea? The government in Pyongyang has already conducted three nuclear tests and claims that it has nuclear warheads that fit on its No Dong medium-range ballistic missiles. If that claim is true, then mounting the warheads on Iran's Shahab missiles, which are copies of the North Korean ones, would present little problem. After all, Iran has collaborated with North Korea on missile design for more than a decade. These off-the-shelf weapons would leave virtually no window of opportunity for a pre-emptive attack by the West and its allies. The warheads could arrive in Iran on a plane in the middle of the night and be immediately fitted onto Iranian missiles. Iran would not have to actually use these missiles to have a deterrent. It could renounce the Non- Proliferation Treaty and flaunt its nukes, as North Korea has done for seven years without suffering a military attack by the U.S. Indeed, such a fait accompli would give Iran the same potential for nuclear retaliation as North Korea. EFTA00639321 Do we know for sure that North Korea has nuclear warheads it could transfer to Iran? There is little doubt that the country has the means to produce between three and six nuclear bombs annually. In 2011, North Korea invited a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Siegfried Hecker, to inspect a state-of-the-art uranium-enrichment plant at Yongbyon, with just such a capability. According to a Feb. 13 report by the Congressional Research Service, U.S. intelligence believes that, in North Korea, "it is likely other, clandestine enrichment facilities exist" to produce fissile material for bombs. North Korea has already demonstrated its willingness to engage in illicit nuclear proliferation by selling a nuclear reactor to Syria (the reactor was destroyed by Israeli bombers in 2007.) We also know that Pyongyang desperately needs money and that, even with sanctions, Iran has billions in oil revenue. If the price is right, then, the North Koreans have every reason to make a deal. One ominous sign that such a deal may be in progress came in February reports by the Sunday Times of London and the Times of Israel that the Iranian physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was in North Korea when it conducted its third nuclear test last month. Mr. Fakhrizadeh, one of the architects of Iran's nuclear program, reportedly headed Iran's secret "project 111," which, according to the 2007 CIA National Intelligence Estimate, worked to design warheads that could be used on Iranian missiles. If he indeed observed the test last month, it would not have been as a tourist. By focusing on preventing Iran from manufacturing a nuke and relying on time to plan a pre-emptive strike, the U.S. may be neglecting Iran's far more dangerous option of buying the bomb. Stopping the delivery of a warheads shipment would not be easy. Not being ready to stop it could prove catastrophic. Mr. Epstein's most recent book is "The Annals of Unsolved Crime" published this month by Melville House. EFTA00639322 Anicle 6. Los Angeles Times 'Star Wars' today: What would Reagan do? Graham Allison March 28, 2013-- President Reagan stunned fellow citizens and the world 30 years ago this month with a dramatic announcement that the United States would develop and deploy a system capable of intercepting and destroying strategic ballistic missiles. Like President Kennedy's pledge to send a man to the moon, Reagan's vision was meant to stretch minds to new realities that most found inconceivable. As the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, developed, this vision encompassed three big ideas. First, technological advances would make it possible to "hit a bullet with a bullet." Second, when fully deployed, this missile defense system would "render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete." For Reagan, this was an essential steppingstone to his even grander vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Third, to persuade America's Cold War adversary to eliminate its superpower nuclear arsenal as well, Reagan proposed to share this SDI technology with Moscow. All three dimensions of Reagan's vision drew immediate, fiery criticism at home and abroad. Skeptics argued that killing a missile with a missile was technically impossible. Thirty years and more than $150 billion of investment later, this objection has been largely overcome. Today, the United States and its allies have deployed missile defense systems for shorter-range missiles (for example, the Israeli Iron Dome and U.S. Patriot systems) and for longer-range missiles (the sea-based Aegis system and a ground-based system deployed in Alaska). Just this month, in response to North Korea's threats, the Obama administration announced plans to deploy an additional 14 ground-based interceptors. Reagan's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons was initially rejected by most of the American establishment as naive and dangerous. In the last decade, however, four of the bluest chips from the American Cold War EFTA00639323 establishment — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn — have put this back on the American strategic agenda. In his first international speech as president, in Prague in the spring of 2009, Barack Obama made this goal his own, arguing that the existence of nuclear weapons is "the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War." The new START arms control agreement reached by Obama and Russia's then- President Dmitry Medvedev in April 2010 took a modest step toward that end. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Reagan's concept was his proposal to share this technology with our Soviet adversaries. During their October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, Reagan proposed to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "to share the benefits of strategic defense. We will agree now to a treaty committing to do so in conjunction with the elimination of ballistic missiles." Moreover, Reagan promised that it would be a "binding treaty that would provide for the sharing of research that demonstrated a potential for defensive applications." Although Gorbachev was intrigued by Reagan's aspiration to eliminate all nuclear weapons, he and his government were suspicious of U.S. intentions. Thus, at the end of the summit, Gorbachev rejected Reagan's bold package because Washington refused to accept Moscow's condition that SDI research be confined to laboratories for a decade. Today, the issue of ballistic missile defense remains a major stumbling block in U.S.- Russian relations, stalling both greater cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in countering Iran's nuclear ambitions and efforts to negotiate further reductions in nuclear arms. Specifically, Moscow is insisting on "binding guarantees" that U.S. missile defenses will not target or affect Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent. In reality, current U.S. missile defense systems are capable only of defending against a limited number of primitive ballistic missiles (without sophisticated decoys), and thus could not effectively defend against a Russian nuclear missile attack. Instead, the unambiguous objective of current U.S. missile deployments is to defeat Iranian and North Korean missile threats and provide protection for U.S. forces and allies against those missile programs. At this impasse, what would Reagan do? One can be sure that he would be thinking well outside the box of conventional proposals now on the table. My bet is that he would offer the Russians not only transparency about U.S. missile defense systems, but actual shared control of those systems in a reconfigured EFTA00639324 deployment that would incorporate Russian as well as U.S. radar systems, and invite Russia to join the U.S. in deploying defenses against emerging nuclear threats. This proposal would also include major reductions in both U.S. and Russian strategic and tactical nuclear arsenals. And the prospect of serious, joint deployments that promised to neutralize the Iranian missile threat would certainly have a stunning impact in Tehran. If Obama borrows a page from Reagan's playbook, Republicans in Washington who claim the 40th president's mantle would be shocked. But the burden would be theirs to explain why deploying missile defenses that would make the U.S. and our allies safer from attacks by Iran and North Korea is not in America's interest. Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School and a former assistant secretary of Defense. The Economist Can India become a great power? Mar 30th 2013 -- NOBODY doubts that China has joined the ranks of the great powers: the idea of a G2 with America is mooted, albeit prematurely. India is often spoken of in the same breath as China because of its billion- plus population, economic promise, value as a trading partner and growing military capabilities. All five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council support—however grudgingly—India's claim to join them. But whereas China's rise is a given, India is still widely seen as a nearly-power that cannot quite get its act together. That is a pity, for as a great power, India would have much to offer. Although poorer and less economically dynamic than China, India has soft power in abundance. It is committed to democratic institutions, the rule of law and human rights. As a victim of jihadist violence, it is in the front rank of the fight against terrorism. It has a huge and talented diaspora. It may not want to be co-opted by the West but it shares many Western values. It is confident and culturally rich. If it had a permanent Security EFTA00639325 Council seat (which it has earned by being one of the most consistent contributors to UN peacekeeping operations) it would not instinctively excuse and defend brutal regimes. Unlike China and Russia, it has few skeletons in its cupboard. With its enormous coastline and respected navy (rated by its American counterpart, with which it often holds exercises, as up to NATO standard) India is well-placed to provide security in a critical part of the global commons. The modest power Yet India's huge potential to be a force for stability and an upholder of the rules-based international system is far from being realised. One big reason is that the country lacks the culture to pursue an active security policy. Despite a rapidly rising defence budget, forecast to be the world's fourth- largest by 2020, India's politicians and bureaucrats show little interest in grand strategy (see article). The foreign service is ridiculously feeble— India's 1.2 billion people are represented by about the same number of diplomats as Singapore's 5m. The leadership of the armed forces and the political-bureaucratic establishment operate in different worlds. The defence ministry is chronically short of military expertise. These weaknesses partly reflect a pragmatic desire to make economic development at home the priority. India has also wisely kept generals out of politics (a lesson ignored elsewhere in Asia, not least by Pakistan, with usually parlous results). But Nehruvian ideology also plays a role. At home, India mercifully gave up Fabian economics in the 1990s (and reaped the rewards). But diplomatically, 66 years after the British left, it still clings to the post-independence creeds of semi-pacifism and "non- alignment": the West is not to be trusted. India's tradition of strategic restraint has in some ways served the country well. Having little to show for several limited wars with Pakistan and one with China, India tends to respond to provocations with caution. It has long-running territorial disputes with both its big neighbours, but it usually tries not to inflame them (although it censors any maps which accurately depict where the border lies, something its press shamefully tolerates). India does not go looking for trouble, and that has generally been to its advantage. Indispensable India EFTA00639326 But the lack of a strategic culture comes at a cost. Pakistan is dangerous and unstable, bristling with nuclear weapons, torn apart by jihadist violence and vulnerable to an army command threatened by radical junior officers. Yet India does not think coherently about how to cope. The government hopes that increased trade will improve relations, even as the army plans for a blitzkrieg-style attack across the border. It needs to work harder at healing the running sore of Kashmir and supporting Pakistan's civilian government. Right now, for instance, Pakistan is going through what should be its first transition from one elected civilian government to the next. India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, should support this process by arranging to visit the country's next leader. China, which is increasingly willing and able to project military power, including in the Indian Ocean, poses a threat of a different kind. Nobody can be sure how China will use its military and economic clout to further its own interests and, perhaps, put India's at risk. But India, like China's other near neighbours, has every reason to be nervous. The country is particularly vulnerable to any interruption in energy supplies (India has 17% of the world's population but just 0.8% of its known oil and gas reserves). India should start to shape its own destiny and the fate of its region. It needs to take strategy more seriously and build a foreign service that is fitting for a great power—one that is at least three times bigger. It needs a more professional defence ministry and a unified defence staff that can work with the country's political leadership. It needs to let private and foreign firms into its moribund state-run defence industry. And it needs a well-funded navy that can become both a provider of maritime security along some of the world's busiest sea-lanes and an expression of India's willingness to shoulder the responsibilities of a great power. Most of all, though, India needs to give up its outdated philosophy of non- alignment. Since the nuclear deal with America in 2005, it has shifted towards the west—it tends to vote America's way in the UN, it has cut its purchases of Iranian oil, it collaborates with NATO in Afghanistan and co- ordinates with the West in dealing with regional problems such as repression in Sri Lanka and transition in Myanmar—but has done so surreptitiously. Making its shift more explicit, by signing up with Western- backed security alliances, would be good for the region, and the world. It EFTA00639327 would promote democracy in Asia and help bind China into international norms. That might not be in India's short-term interest, for it would risk antagonising China. But looking beyond short-term self-interest is the kind of thing a great power does. That India can become a great power is not in doubt. The real question is whether it wants to. EFTA00639328