By I am really getting concerned with the ever expanding American nuclear umbrella especially if it ever covers any country in the Middle East:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set off tremors in the Middle East this week when she said a nuclear Iran could be contained by a U.S. “defense umbrella” — an offhand remark that appears to have emerged from obscure Washington policy debates and her own presidential campaign rhetoric.
Clinton’s comments raised eyebrows because they seemed to go beyond the Obama administration’s current thinking on Iran, which has been strictly focused on preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Since making the remark on a television chat show in Thailand, Clinton has backpedaled, saying she was only restating existing policy and not referring to any sort of formal guarantees of protection under an American “nuclear umbrella.” [Associated Press]
Obama has already stated he has no problem with a peaceful Iranian nuclear program, which we know is just cover to kick the Iranian nuclear issue down the road. However, what concerns me the most is that by offering nuclear umbrella guarantees to anyone in the Middle East reminds me of the prelude to World War I with people offering security guarantees to Balkan countries which ultimately caused the blood bath of World War I.
What if the Russians offer a nuclear umbrella to the Iranians in response? Would we go to war with the Russians because of the hatred these countries in the Middle East have for each other?
1:23 am on July 26th, 2009 1
Eh — I don’t know…
Obama might have made people think this is shaky, but the US will back Israel in any conflict where Israel is too out gunned, but as far as that goes, it has its own nuclear deterrent and proven military in such a fight without us.
Next, as long as we have a significant level of troops in Iraq, and perhaps even if we pull out of a very stable Iraq, we’ll guarantee its defense.
We also have a long term stake in Kuwait.
We also saw in Iraq War I (The Gulf War), if the Saudi oilfields are threatened, we’ll feel we have to join in.
I’d have to think about it, but there really isn’t a nation Iran is likely to attack, if it so desired, that we would not feel a significant need to help. Israel might be an exception but only because they have proven they don’t need it.
I’d think we’d stand a better chance long term of being drawn into trouble we might want to avoid by our extending NATO to places like Poland and other Eastern European nations once part of the Soviet bloc.
Sort of like a Bosnia/Kosovo situation but with an automatic trigger if Putin’s Russia becomes the norm long term and we have meanwhile contracted a security arrangement with those former Soviet allies…
The event with Georgia and Russia recently is a sign of this danger.
In short, US troop presence and the necessity of protecting the world’s oil supply – coupled with our long-term close relationship with Israel – likely makes helping defend against Iran “mandatory” –
— but Russia can field a bigger and better military and threaten nations we really don’t have an overwhelming interest in protecting – making offering such a shield to them more questionable – I’d think – than to Iraq or Kuwait.
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7:32 pm on July 26th, 2009 2
Can’t help but remember Hillory standing with the Palistinians during her husbands presidency. I think she is an idiological closet supporter of the rogue nations in the mideast. Not to say she is for Iran, but against Israel.
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