Andrew Lichterman

“Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy - a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress.” George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31, 2006.

Every four years, the U.S. Department of Defense issues its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a broad outline of U.S. military policy and the types of programs that the Department wants to implement it. The next (2005) version is due out in February, but InsideDefense.com has published 42 pages of the draft QDR (subscription required). Resources and commentary on current and past QDR’s can be found at the Project for Defense Alternatives.

“Orwellian” is a term that is overused, but both the language and the content of the 2005 QDR, echoed by George Bush in his State of the Union speech, evoke resonances of “1984,” Orwell’s tale of dictatorship sustained by eternal war. Several locutions that recur throughout the QDR manifest a vision of war without end, fought increasingly by forces that are both less visible and less accountable. Over and over the QDR authors tell us that we are fighting what they now call “the long war” — an even more open-ended term than the “war on terror,” since it can be fought against anyone, anywhere, anytime. Bush used the same phrase in his State of the Union Address to underscore his favorite theme: he is a War President, and must be allowed to do whatever he alone deems necessary. The draft QDR puts a bit more meat on the State of the Union’s rhetorical bones, giving us some idea of how those in power plan to use this “long war” as a justification for more war and less democracy. (more…)

Michael Spies

On Monday, January 23, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced that the P5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, UK, US, padawan permanent member Germany, and the European Union have agreed on a compromise proposal to “report” Iran to the Security Council. The statement does not necessarily predetermine the language of any International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board resolution, which will likely be tabled on Thursday and must be agreed to by a majority of states on the 35 member Board. Nor does it signal that any future Security Council action will necessarily involve the imposition of economic sanctions, contrary to the assumption of much of the U.S. media. However, it does indicate how the most powerful states on the Board will seek to shape how this matter is brought to the Security Council.

The major compromise on the part of the US was to agree “that the Security Council should await the Director General’s report to the March meeting of the IAEA Board … before deciding to take action to reinforce the authority of the IAEA process.” The US Permanent Representative to the UN, John Bolton, holds the rotating Security Council presidency for the month of February. Possibly a factor underwriting this compromise, the agreement thus ensures that this issue will not come the Council while Bolton has the authority to set its agenda, to the relief of anyone who hopes for a diplomatic and non-confrontational outcome to the Iranian dilemma (Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute disagrees). Argentina, which voted in favor of the IAEA finding Iran in non-compliance in September, holds the Security Council presidency for March. (more…)