Fausta’s Blog

Yet more dismal foreign policy from the Obama administration:

Obama to chair UN meeting on nuclear nonproliferation. I wonder if that’s scheduled before, or after, Gaddafi asks the UN to abolish Switzerland.

Bad idea:

The president didn’t just decide to chair a rare council summit; he also set the September 24 agenda — as is the prerogative of the state holding the gavel for the month. His choice, in the words of American UN Ambassador Susan Rice, speaking on September 2 at her first press briefing since the United States assumed the council presidency, is this: “The session will be focused on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any specific countries.”

This seemingly innocuous language has two profoundly disturbing features. First, UN documents indicate that the Security Council is currently dealing with over 100 issues. While “non-proliferation” is mentioned, “disarmament” is not. Similarly, a UN Secretariat compilation “forecasting the Council’s program of work” for the month of September — based on prior activities and requests — lists non-proliferation specifically in relation to Iran and North Korea and does not list disarmament. But in light of Obama’s wishes, a tailor-made subheading will likely be adopted under the existing entry “maintenance of international peace and security.” The new item will insist on simultaneous consideration of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and make no mention of particular states.

This is no trivial technicality. The linguistic formula, which Obama’s confrere Qaddafi will undoubtedly exploit, shamelessly panders to Arab and Muslim states. It is a familiar recipe for stonewalling efforts to prevent Iran or other Muslim and Arab states from acquiring nuclear weapons until Israel is disarmed or Israel’s (unofficial) nuclear capacity is exposed and neutralized. It is also a frequent tool of those whose real goal is to stymie America’s defenses.

Second, Obama’s agenda preference indicates that he is dead-set against chairing a session on the non-proliferation issues already on the council’s plate — those that name Iran and North Korea. This stretches his “beer summit” technique to the global scale. Naming names, or identifying the actual threats to world peace, would evidently interfere with the spectacle of proclaiming affection for world peace in the abstract. The problem is that this feel-good experience will feel best of all to Iran, which has interpreted Obama’s penchant for form over substance to be a critical weakness. As a Tehran newspaper close to the regime snickered in July: “Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

Go read the rest of that article.

Oh, and by the way, this week the UN declared Fidel Castro “a World Hero.” The award was presented by the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto, who, as you may recall, thinks Castro is “the closest thing we have to a saint.” US-born anti-Semite and former Sandinista D’Escoto is one of Ahmadinejad’s buddies and publicly embraced him after ‘Jad’s fiery UN speech last year where Ahmadinajad quoted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

UPDATE, Monday September 7:
Uncle Jimbo speculates,

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Fausta's blog, UN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.