Small Wars Journal

What do the NPT and the League of Nations have in common?

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 12:13pm
Before World War II, the League of Nations wagged its finger at the transgressions of Italy, Japan, and Germany. In response, those three countries simply walked out of the organization and challenged the League to do something about it. We know the rest of the story.

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for its "breach of its obligations" to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and for its refusal to comply with UN Security Council resolutions directed at Iran's nuclear program.

Iran responded by announcing a plan to greatly expand its uranium enrichment capacity, with plans to add 10 additional enrichments sites. Even though Russia and China joined Europe, the United States, and a majority of other countries in the IAEA vote against Iran, the Iranian government did not hesitate to escalate its breach with the IAEA and the Security Council.

The Iran government is likely only a few small steps away from quitting the NPT and ejecting IAEA monitoring from its country. Should, as seems likely, Iran leave the NPT and disappear from IAEA monitoring, it will then be the Security Council's responsibility to formulate a response. But the international legal system designed to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation -- a system comprising the NPT, the IAEA, and the Security Council -- has yet to demonstrate that it can stop countries that are determined to build a nuclear weapons capability.

The Security Council will likely impose much stiffer economic and financial sanctions against Iran. Based on its decisions to escalate the dispute, the Iranian government doesn't seem concerned by this prospect. It must be concluding that side deals, smuggling, and oil market leverage will suffice to allow the regime to meet its goals.

The likely failure of sanctions to change Iran's behavior would then bring the contentious issue of preventive war back into focus. No doubt the Security Council is many months, probably years away from taking up this debate. It remains to be seen whether it will fare any better than did the League of Nations in the 1930s. In the meantime, the international community will have to contemplate how it will cope with a nuclear nonproliferation system which is useless against determined regimes.

Comments

Bob's World

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 8:19pm

Anon,

Does name calling on the "neocons and pro-zionits" help? Besides, the Saudis probably do more to keep us at odds with Iranians as well. Damn shame, given the tremendous importance of Iran and the fact that it has arguably the most pro-American populace in the Middle East.

What I found more interesting was the comparison with the League of Nations. The league was fromed from the ashes of Wilson's 14 points (worth a 5-minute google to review); that were torn to shreds by European allies far more bent on keeping their colonies and punishing the Germans than they were on creating conditions that could give a chance for an enduring peace. I would argue that WWII was cast at Versaille, and no organization born of that treaty could have prevented an ultimate re-balancing.

FDR called for similar measures at the end of WWII and was met with similar resistence by Churchill primarily, and others. Both US presidents had called for an end to colonialism and for self-determination of governances for the populaces of those exploited peoples. FDR's plan died with him, and the realities of the Cold War, the strategy of containment, and the US need for secure and certain flow of energy resources from the middle east gave rise to a new era of US brand shaping of governance to meet our needs over those of the affected populaces; and again, it is doubtful that some treaty organization can overcome such history without first addressing the history.

Once we better address the history of Western-Middle Eastern relations, then and only then, will we be able to more effectively address the current manifestations of popular and governmental discontent with that history.

Mark Pyruz

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 5:32pm

Anti-Iran hawks would like nothing better were Iran to withdraw from the NPT, and the Iranians know this. Provocations such as the latest IAEA resolution are intended to push Iran in that direction, in an effort to get it to isolate itself. It won't work. And given the number of no votes and abstentions this time around, which included Brazil and Turkey, more nations are waking up to the fact that Iran has a legitimate right to the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as affording the advantages of trade and diplomatic ties.

Comparisons to the League of Nations do not work. The League of Nations did not possess a hegemonist superpower to effectively manage an elitist (and in this case, dated) group within a group, in the form of the UNSC.

It will be interesting to see in what direction the West's nuclear dispute with Iran will go next. There are indications from a number of directions that suggest growing (non-West) opposition to sanctions, as well as Iran's proven track record of effectively countering them.

Neocons and pro-Zionists aside, perhaps it would just be easier to take up one of the many Iranian nuclear compromises that have been offered up during the decade. But given the domineering influence of the Zionist agenda on the US government in Washington, that always seems too much to ask for.

Grant (not verified)

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 2:22pm

I understand that Iran may not actually have a capacity to build more facilities or a reason to. Also, I doubt that Iran would actually leave the treaty if only because doing so would make it harder for China and Russia to avoid penalizing Iran.