Cato Daily Dispatch for October 17, 2003
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via PDA (AvantGo)
(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)
Saudis: We Are Good SoldiersU.S. Challenging EU Defense Policy
Latest North Korea Threat Dismissed as Bluff
Saudis: We Are Good Soldiers
"Stung by American criticisms that they've been soft on terrorists, Saudi officials are divulging for the first time several intelligence and diplomatic favors they have provided the United States in the war on terrorism dating to 1997," the Associated Press reports. In interviews, "Saudi officials said the assistance has ranged from sharing of information identifying a possible leader in the al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in 1998 to intervention with Yemeni officials on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney in the last year."
Cato Senior Fellow Doug Bandow says the United States should rethink its relationship with the Saudis. In "Befriending Saudi Princes: A High Price for a Dubious Alliance," he writes: "The United States must not retreat from the world. But it should stop intervening militarily and supporting illegitimate and unpopular regimes where its vital interests are not involved, as in Saudi Arabia."
U.S. Challenging EU Defense Policy
"The US has called an emergency NATO meeting to challenge the creation of a stronger security and defense policy for the European Union," the Financial Times reports.
"The call by Nicholas Burns, U.S. ambassador to NATO, reflects growing unease among Pentagon officials over the way Britain wants to work more closely with its EU allies in building credible defense structures and better military capabilities. But it also highlights tensions in the transatlantic alliance, with the U.S. seeing any future EU defense policy as a potential competitor to NATO."
In "Casualties of War: Transatlantic Relations and the Future of NATO in the Wake of the Second Gulf War," Christopher Layne, visiting fellow in foreign policy studies, writes: "NATO has failed to live up to expectations in the post-Cold War world for three main reasons. First, the military capabilities of the European NATO members are limited. Second, the European members of NATO do not share Washington's enthusiasm for confronting 'out of area' threats. And, third, Washington has deliberately chosen to bypass the alliance because it regards the European NATO military capabilities as a drag on American power rather than a contributor to it."
Latest North Korea Threat Dismissed as Bluff
"North Korea's threat to display a 'nuclear deterrent' at an appropriate time was dismissed in South Korea on Friday as bluff, and U.S. officials said they saw nothing new in the latest rhetoric from Pyongyang," Reuters reports.
"In comments published late on Thursday by the official KCNA news agency, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the country would move to end debate over its nuclear status if the United States delayed a solution to a year-old nuclear impasse."
According to Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, America should reduce its presence in South Korea and Japan and give those countries the green light to begin developing nuclear weapons of their own. Carpenter expressed those views in a Cato report, "Options for Dealing with North Korea."
"Giving Pyongyang additional rewards in the hope that it will live up to agreements it has already violated would...be a naïve strategy" because of the country's history of breaching nuclear agreements, he says. The most well suited approach would be to "raise the possibility of a regional nuclear balance."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
/div>