Newsletter No. 275
May 20, 2006

 

BOLTON PUSHES BACK

The Asahi has carried an interview with John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the UN, and well-known superhawk of the Bush Administration.

Just yesterday we reported that Iranian Ambassador Mohsen Talaei was talking tough about Japanese interests in Iran on the 17th. It took only one day for Bolton to respond by launching a few veiled threats of his own. He said:

“This is what we've been worried about, about Iran's very savvy use of its oil and natural gas resources to apply leverage on countries like Japan and India and China that have large and growing energy demands… Iran is very cynically using the reliance of Japan on Iran for oil -- the possibility of the Azadegan oil field and other things -- to try to back Japan away from its very principled commitment to non-proliferation.”

Of course Bolton is correct that Tehran is using oil and gas as leverage on Tokyo, but his implication that this is something “very cynical” is a rather mystifying characterization coming from this man. The Bush Administration -- and Bolton himself above all -- are well-known for their arm-twisting and blackmail tactics on smaller countries. The US is even now using the US-Japan Security Alliance and other issues to pressure Tokyo to fall into line on Iran. Why isn’t that “very cynical” too?

As for Japan’s “very principled commitment to non-proliferation,” that too is a comment dripping with hypocrisy. Bolton would be howling if Tokyo applied its non-proliferation policy to American threats of nuclear attacks on Iran, or Israel, or even the recent US-India nuclear deal.

I believe in principles that are applied evenly and fairly. Bolton has a clear track record of taking principled poses only when it serves his immediate interests. As far as political ethics go, this man has no credibility in my mind.

At any rate, he continued: “When you're looking at a country ruled by a man like Ahmadinejad, who threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and who is pursuing nuclear weapons, it is just good due diligence to say, 'Is this a country we want to invest in?'... There are all kinds of possibilities, now that economic sanctions are lifted, for exploration and drilling in Libyan oil assets. I'm sure that's something that Japanese planners are considering.”

More dishonesty: Note how he says that Iran “is pursuing nuclear weapons” as if that were an established fact. He used to say the same about Saddam Husain and Iraq -- evidence, Mr. Bolton, evidence! It may be true, but it hasn’t been proven.

There are two good things about this Bolton interview with the Asahi. It does establish as fact two reports that have emerged earlier.

First of all, recall that US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was reported to have asked Tokyo to stop the Azadegan project, but this report was officially denied in both Washington and Tokyo (see Shingetsu Newsletter No. 224). Well, Bolton’s comments now clear up any doubt on this point, because his idea here is clearly aimed at convincing Japan to give up on Azadegan.

The second point to note is his notion of trading Tehran for Tripoli. News reports back in August 2004 alleged that Washington had made the same suggestion to Tokyo even then. Bolton is recycling an old idea here. It’s unlikely that this is practical suggestion. According to my understanding, the quality of the oil in the two countries is different, and in any case Japan is already involved in Libya. Why should Tokyo really give up on Iran when it would make no economic sense to do so? I doubt that Bolton’s idea will get much traction in METI.

When we look at the comments this week by Ambassador Talaei and Ambassador Bolton in total, we can see that the game of pressuring Tokyo over the Iran nuclear crisis has now broken out into the open. The arguments being used are not new, but what had previously been behind-the-scenes is now pushing out into the public domain.

 

COMMENTARY

1) From Clifford Kiracofe of Washington and Lee University and Virginia Military Academy on May 22, 2006.

Might I suggest to newsletter readers that we place this tension in Japan-US relations relations into the broader context of US energy geopolitics of the last fifteen years or so? It appears to me, that the “oil wars game” / “new Great Game” we seem to be in currently was spelled out (for public consumption well after the fact) in Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). I would suggest that the general policy lines laid out in this book were the US Establishment geopolitical consensus during the Clinton Administration and have continued unabated during Bush 43's first and second terms.

I would also suggest that the primary issue for the United States is not the "WMD" issue with Iran, as intelligence suggests that nuclear weapons capability for them is down the road five or ten years. Given its emotional content, the WMD issue, just as in the Iraq case, is the tool used by the White House to mobilize domestic and international opinion. The real underlying issue, however, as Bolton plainly spelled out, is the geopolitics of oil and its relationship to the emerging multipolar world. In the early 21st century, Iran can play a pivotal role in this context and its relations with Japan, Russia, and China are therefore disturbing to a US Establishment that wishes global "dominance" and "primacy" within a self-serving and narcissistic fantasy (neoconservative or otherwise) called a "unipolar world."

2) From Dave Derval of Azadegan Petroleum Development Ltd. on May 23, 2006.

What Dr. Kiracofe says is actually very correct. If any of your membership are interested, I have just finished reading two very interesting and well researched books:

William R. Clark, Petrodollar Warfare - http://www.petrodollarwarfare.com

Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil

These books expand substantially on Dr. Kiracofe's comments above and are well worth a read.