Does Israel Have the Right to Exist?

 Does Israel have the right to exist? That's a stupid question, and the answer to stupid questions is yes and no. Does the United States have the right to exist? yes and no. There is a version of the United States that does not have the right to exist. That version existed until the Reconstruction amendments to the constitution were enacted between 1865 and 1870. That version legalized slaveryand the forceable expropriation of land from native Americans, and denied women the right to vote. That version of the United States did not have the right to exist. Recognizing this,our citizens eventually amended the Constitution to abolish slavery and give women the right to vote. (Less was done to right the wrongs done to Native Americans.)

In the case of Israel, there is no consitution to amend. There is, however, the Basic Law enacted in 2018 saying that "the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People" and that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is "unique to the Jewish People."

Such a state does not have the right to exist because it denies equal rights to people who are not Jewish. This is an ethnic state and ethnic states do not have the right to exist.

There is a version of Israel that would have the right to exist. It would enact a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of ethnicity; granting citizenship to all non-Jews residing in Israel, and and inviting all Palestinians residing in Israel before1948 and their descendents to return to Israel and become citizens on equal terms with Jews. That is the only version of Israel that has a right to exist. The version of Israel that exists under the Basic Law has no right to exist. The version of the United States that existed before the Civil War had no right to exist. The version of France that existed before the 1789 revolution had no right to exist. The version of Germany that existed between 1933 and 1945 has no right to exist. The version of Russia that existed under Catherine the Great, Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin then had and now has no right to exist. 

So no. This Israel does not have the right to exist. But there is a version of Israel that would.

To Ross Douthat: What you should have asked Matthew Continetti

 

Dear Ross,

I found your conversation with Matthew Continetti somewhat disappointing. If as you say Continetti is  a leading intellectual of the conservative right, it would have been more illuminating to hear him argue why, as a matter of public policy rather than politics, conservatives have it right, especially on two key issues you talked about: woke versus slept, and immigration. So here are some public policy ideas I wish you and Continetti had taken up.

On Woke versus Slept

We progressive liberals on the woke left believe that social and economic justice demands affirmative action. That’s based on our reading of 19^th century American history, in which millions of black and native American lives were shattered by the institution of slavery and ejection of native Americans from their land. We believe that if you break it you own it, and so as a society, we own the legacy of social and economic inequality that results when deeply unequal amounts of  human and financial capital are transferred from one generation to the next for many generations.

 We reject the myth of meritocracy, which says that after 100 years, any remaining inequality can only be explained by differences in talent and hard work. The way we see it, America has become an inherited meritocracy, in which parents’ ability to invest in their children’s human capital – the “merit” metric that drives unnatural selection in our competitive society – is entirely a function of how much parents can afford to spend.

The central message of Critical Race Theory, which we endorse, is that the socio-economic status of anyone living in America today is heavily dependent on the legacy of human capital investment from which she has benefitted, or of which she has been deprived, not just in her own lifetime, but over the generations of her ancestors. Human capital investment, or lack thereof, is above all an inter-generational phenomenon. Which is why today we live in an inherited meritocracy.

The slept right rejects this way of thinking. It believes that it is unfair for an institution – for example a school or a fire department – to reject an applicant with a higher “merit” score and select someone with a lower score. The woke left sees things differently. We don’t frame the question through the eyes of the rejected individual alone. In that frame, his rejection doesn’t seem fair, but in our frame, he is a citizen of a country and a member of a society that has historically treated some classes of people unjustly. The legacy of that injustice lives on. and justice is served through affirmative action to discriminate in favor of those who are victims of that legacy.

On Immigration

As for immigration, your conversation did not elicit any ideas about immigration as a public policy issue – only a political issue. Of course it works politically to oppose immigration – legal and illegal, past and present. But the question for a leading intellectual on the right should have been whether what Stephen Miller is doing is good for our country.

Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain offers a pertinent commentary contrasting vividly the woke and slept perspectives on immigration.

 In1854, the 19 year-old Sam Clemens left Hannibal Mo to spend a few months working as a compositor in a print shop in New York City. Here’s Chernow’s account:

“However entranced he was by New York City, Sam Clements was still blinkered by small town bias, and revolted by the racial and ethnic mix in lower Manhattan. Shaped by Hannibal, he spewed forth prejudice. His daily stroll to work led him through the tough immigrant neighbourhood of Five Points and he gazed with sheer loathing at the diverse inhabitants:

‘Niggers, mulattoes, quadroons, Chinese and some the Lord no doubt originally intended to be white but the dirt on whose faces leaves one uncertain as to that fact. To block up the little narrow streets and wade through through this mass of human vermin would raise the ire of the most patient person that ever lived.’”

Chernow writes, “A massive tide of German and Irish immigration had spawned the nativist Know Nothing party in the 1850s and Sam echoed their xenophobia, squawking to his brother Orion that:

 ‘There are so many abominable foreigners here [in Philadelphia] who hate everything American.  I always thought the eastern people were paragons of uprightness, but I never saw so many whiskey-swilling, God despising heathens as I find in this part of the country.’”

Chernow then tells us that Clemens saw the matter very differently twenty years later, when “[Clemens] left a withering portrait of his youthful self as ‘a callow fool,  a self-sufficient ass, a human tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is remodelling the world, and is entirely capable of doing it right.  Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness, and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 or 20.’”

Clemens’ blinkered 19-year old self is where slept nativist Americans are today. Clemens’ awakened 39-year old self is where the woke left is today.

So here are the policy questions I wish you had asked Continenti: notwithstanding the recurring bouts of American nativists’ antipathy towards immigrants,hasn’t immigration always been good for the American economy and American society? Does it make sense to decry the rise of the non-native born share of the population from 4.7% in 1970 to 14.9% in 2023 (US Census Bureau data), when demographers report that the 2023 total fertility rate  of native-born American women was 1.7 (below the replacement rate of 2.1) versus 2.2 for immigrant women? The overall average rate of 1.8 is well below the replacement rate, and it will be even lower if Stephen Miller gets his way. Does the right endorse the idea that it’s better to have a shrinking country, with all the economic problems that would entail, if that’s what it takes to keep the country white?

And how about crime? According to the most recent data, the violent crime rate for native-born Americans was 213 per 100,000, while the rate for illegal (i.e. undocumented) immigrants was 96.2. For drug crime, the numbers are 332 for native-born Americans and 135 for illegal immigrants. By deporting illegal immigrants, Stephen Miller is increasing the overall rates of violent and drug crime in the US population. Does Continetti think this Is good public policy?

As always,

Daniel Badger

 

To Ross Douthat: What Chris Murphy should say at a town meeting in Hannibal MO

Dear Ross,

As a fellow citizen of the Nutmeg State, I found your conversation with our Senator Chris Murphy both enlightening and provocative. Great journalism!

At the heart of the case you were prosecuting against the Senator is the fact that he is agnostic. He can’t stand before voters anywhere and proclaim that he believes in an awesome God, because he has doubts. And if he can’t say that in a red state, he can’t expect church-going voters in those states to identify with him. And if they can’t identify with him, how can he persuade them to vote for him?

However, as is often the case with prosecutors, I don’t believe your avenue of attack was altogether fair. When the Senator said this:

“Church was the place where I learned selflessness. I learned to care about my neighbors, that moment in church every Sunday morning when you turn to the strangers next to you and introduce yourself was an important reminder to me that even if I didn't know somebody I still should care about them and they were part of my community.”

and this:

“I struggle with my own personal thoughts about God and the afterlife but I find that even if your beliefs lean towards secularism or deism or agnosticism you can still find a lot of value in church.”

you said this:

“The language you just gave me is very Connecticut. I hear that language all the time. I would like to go to church because I get a lot from it socially.”

That’s a fair characterization of most members of the congregation at Christ Church, Greenwich where I was baptized , but it’s an unfair characterization of what the Senator said to you about what church-going means to him.

The Senator’s views on the existence of God and the value of church in society place him somewhere between the worshippers at Christ Church, Greenwich on the one side and the worshippers of an awesome God in Missouri, etc. on the other. But if the Senator can’t honestly say in a church or at a town meeting in Hannibal, MO that he believes in an awesome God, here is what he can say:

“What separates you from me is not my views about humanity, but my views about divinity. I can’t ask you to identify with my views about divinity. Jesus preached that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind. But my soul and mind have doubts about the nature of God, the afterlife, the miracles and resurrection of Jesus, and many other things the Bible tells me are true.

“However, I can and do ask you to identify with my views about humanity. Jesus preached that the second great commandment, like unto the first, was to love thy neighbor as thyself. Some may say that you can’t be a Christian if you can’t bring yourself to obey the first great commandments. But I would say that neither can you be a Christian if you can’t bring yourself to obey the second.

“The idea that we should love ourselves and our family more than we love our neighbors, that we should love our neighbors more than we love people in the next town, and that we should love them more than people in the next country – the so-called “order of love”--  dates back to the Christian theologians St. Augustine in the 4^th century AD and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

“These days, the “order of love” is being promoted from the White House as “common sense.” But I say it’s nonsense. It preaches disobedience to Jesus’s second great commandment. This idea may somehow be compatible with the Christianity of Augustine, Aquinas and the White House, but it is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ, who simply said Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself. Period. [Matthew 22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31 and Luke 10:27].

“And by the way, if you try to get your head around the tortured logic by which Augustine and Aquinas attempt to reconcile the plain meaning of Jesus’s second commandment with ordo amoris, you will be very much reminded of Antonin Scalia’s contorted attempts to reconcile the plain meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution with his idea that the Framers intended to grant all citizens the right to bear arms, whether or not they are members of a well-regulated militia.”

[Of course, it might be impolitic for Senator Murphy to make this point in Hannibal MO. But it’s true.]

Finally, Ross, I wish Senator Murphy had concluded your conversation with him by saying this to you:

“It’s true, as you say, that many red state voters have trouble identifying with someone who can’t tell them he believes in an awesome God. But it’s also true that a large majority of those voters happily gave Donald Trump a pass on the awesome God question, even though the man plainly believed not in an awesome God, but in his own awesome self.

“How can both of these things be true? The answer, I believe, is that these Trump voters care less about a candidate’s views on divinity than about his views on humanity. In Trump, they see a man who proudly wears on his sleeve a brand of humanity towards people who don’t support him marinated in grievance, resentment, intimidation, humiliation and retribution. That’s a brand of humanity these voters identify with. But is it Christian?”  

Daniel Badger

West Hartford CT

May 12, 2025 

To Ross Douthat: the question I wish you had asked Jonathan Keeperman

 Dear Ross,

First, thank you very much for your Interesting Times podcasts exploring why intelligent people on the right think the way they do. This is an invaluable service to liberals like me.
 
 One part of your conversation with Jonathan Keeperman was particularly striking to me, and prompted this note to you. Here’s a partial transcript of what Keeperman said, followed by the response I wish you have given.

"What does that look like in a future where it’s not a predominantly white country? These are legitimate things to think about. A lot of people didn't want us having these conversations previously, but then what happens in 2013-14 and then scales up over the course of the 2010’s is this insistence coming from the left that we have our moment of racial reckoning. So a bunch of people then are being asked to have a difficult conversation about race, and the prevailing view which is taken on by the New York Times by academia by and large is that any differences in outcomes among people can be ascribed to this infinitely amorphic, non-falsifiable, infinitely pervasive thing called systemic racism.  And this is if not intentionally, then de facto the fault of the white population in the country. So the question then is: is that true?  Are we allowed to look at the actual causes of why these discrepancies exist?  And it just is the case that when you look at these differences they are not attributable to white racism. You can actually identify causes”

Your response to Keeperman’s assertions was not entirely satisfying to me. You began by saying that you buy his version of the argument, then talked about Robert D'Angelo and psychological self-scrutinies to root out hidden structural racism, and then went on to Tin-Tin. 

Here’s how I wish you had responded to Keeperman:

“I want to challenge your critique of the view that the differences in outcomes between blacks and other races can be ascribed to systemic racism. You say there are other causes, having nothing to do with racism, and you imply that you’ve studied them. But you didn't say what these causes are, or mention any studies of them. So I would ask you please to enumerate these other causes for me. But before you do, and since I'm on the New York Times payroll, it's first incumbent on me to tell you what the left thinks causes these differences.

I believe you are referring to differences between blacks ond other groups on crime and incarceration rates, single-parenting, educational and professional achievement, and of course on income and wealth.

Liberals ascribe these differences to systemic racism because, in their view, they are legacies of forms of racial discrimination that were historically grounded in core institutions of American society. As the word legacy implies, what happened in the past leaves an imprint on the present. So differences in outcomes persist today to some extent, even though the historical structures of discrimination that caused the differences have been largely dismantled. 

This began of course with the institution of slavery, which not only deprived blacks of education and the means of accumulating wealth, but also, and more insidiously, undermined the cohesion and sanctity of the slave family unit. 

Wealth, education and family cohesion are transmitted from one generation to the next, as are poverty, ignorance and family dysfunction. Sociologists who study what the subject called the inter-generational transmission of socio-economic status find reasonably strong statistical correlations between, on the one hand, such explanatory variables as parent incomes, parent educational attainment, number of parents in the household, property values and crime rates in the neighborhood where a child grows up and, on the other hand, such outcomes as the child’s income as an adult, educational attainment, property values and crime rates where the child lives as an adult, the probability the child will commit a crime as an adult, and the probability the child will marry and remain married for life.
 
 Correlation implies causation where there is corroborating evidence. Here the corroborating evidence is the fact that children learn to behave well or badly from their parents, their parents’ friends, and their peers in school and on the streets they grow up in. Other corroborating evidence is the fact that the amount of human capital invested in a child while growing up depends largely on the amount of human and financial capital the child’s parents have to invest.
  
 The inter-generational correlation coefficients for socio-economic status are nowhere near perfect. Most studies show correlation coefficients in the range of 0.25 to 0.5 for most of the variables. This means that there is and historically always has been a fair degree of socio-economic mobility in America. Nevertheless, the studies show that today, a child whose parents’ lifetime income is in the bottom 20% of incomes for all parents has a 4% chance of having a lifetime income in the top 20% of incomes for her birth cohort. On the other hand, a child whose parents’ lifetime income is in the top 20% of incomes for all parents has a 39% chance of having a lifetime income in the top 20% of incomes for her birth cohort.

For black children, this odds-of-success gap is even wider, because black children’s parents are much more likely to have incomes in the bottom 20% compared to other groups. Again, for historical reasons.

Following emancipation, the socio-economic status of blacks was far, far below every other ethnic class in Ameria. Over time, and in the absence of any further institutional discrimination against blacks, the gap would have narrowed at a certain rate. But institutional racism persisted in different forms following emancipation:  in legislation enacted at all levels of government, in education, in civil and criminal justice enforcement, in public services, in property markets, and in private sector hiring. 
 
 As a result of these post-emancipation forms of institutional racial discrimination, the status gap caused by slavery narrowed more slowly than it would have done in the absence of ongoing institutional racial discrimination.

So I have this question for you, Jonathan: first, can you identify any cause of the differences we see today between blacks and other groups that is not itself the result either of intergenerational transmission of the poverty, miseducation and destruction of family life that were the legacies of slavery, or the result of continuing institutional racial discrimination after emancipation?”

To Richard Dawkins

Dear Richard,

In The God Delusion you refute every reasoned argument that has been made for the existence of God, including creationism and intelligent design.

However, I find two weak points in your argumentation: first in your discussion of the improbability of our universe, and second in your discussion of the emergence of consciousness. Here I will only talk about the first of these.

Darwinians have demonstrated convincingly that once life (i.e. organic chemistry) got started on Earth, there is no need for God to explain any of the life forms that have since emerged (excepting consciousness, if this is considered to be a form of life). But how improbable was it that organic chemistry got started on Earth? Your answer is: yes, it was exceedingly improbable that organic chemistry got started on Earth. However, we know that our universe contains billions of billions of billions of planets where organic chemistry had a chance to get started, and so it is not at all improbable that it was able to get started on a few or even many of them, even though the number of successful life-forming planets is an infinitesimal fraction of the total. "Anthropic" thinking tends to object, "Given that unsuccessful planets outnumber successful ones by a factor of billions of billions, isn't it wildly improbable that we are lucky enough to find ourselves living on one of the vanishingly few successful ones?" Your answer is, "No. It is a necessity that, if we found ourselves living anywhere, it would have to be on one of the vanishingly few successful life-forming planets. The existence of a few of these is not at all improbable. You and I couldn't exist anywhere else. Given that we do, it had to happen here."

So far, so good. But you realize that the questions and answers can't stop here. The high probability that organic chemistry would have to get started somewhere in our universe is the result of the way our universe is made up.  But contemporary physics now understands that the makeup of our universe is itself wildly improbable. That's because its survival for more than a few attoseconds (the time it takes for light to travel the length of three hydrogen atoms) after the Big Bang was only possible because the values of several fundamental constants -- e.g. the strong force binding the components of the atomic nucleus -- happened to be just so. Had any of the values been every so slightly different, the universe as we know it would never have unfolded. There wouldn't have been all these billions of billions of planets, and no organic chemistry.

You then argue that we can resolve the problem of the improbability of the universe in the same way that we resolved the problem of the improbability of organic chemistry getting started on Earth -- by getting beyond anthropic thinking. If our universe is one of many, many, many universes out there in time and space (the multiverse theory), it is not at all improbable that a universe with the values for the fundamental constants that allowed our universe to thrive would sooner or later have popped into existence.

But here is the rub: the argument that a successful life-forming planet is not at all improbable rests on the provable proposition -- based on observation through telescopes --  that there are many, many, many planets in this universe. But the proposition that there are many, many, many universes besides our own rests on no observations at all. Furthermore, there is no conceivable observation that could prove it to be false. Because it is not "falsifiable," the multiverse theory fails the fundamental test that any theory must pass if it is to be accepted as scientific. Indeed, the only thing that can be said in favor of the multiverse theory is that if it is false, and ours is the only universe that ever has been or ever will be, then ours is a miraculous universe. Since science cannot accept the miraculous, science must accept the theory of the multiverse, even though it will never be able to produce any observable evidence for it.

Here you are trying to dispose of the argument that the multiverse hypothesis is no less improbable than the God hypothesis:

"If we are going to permit the extravagence of a multiverse, so the argument runs, we might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb and allow a God. Aren't they both equally unparsimonious ad hoc hypotheses, and equally unsatisfactory? People who think that have not had their consciousness raised by natural selection. The key difference between the genuinely extravagent God hypothesis and the apparently extravagant multiverse hypothesis is one of statistical improbability. The multiverse, for all it is extravagant, is simple. God, or any intelligent, decision-taking calculating agent, would have to be highly improbable in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain. The multiverse may seem extravagent in sheer number of universes. But if each of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws, we are still not postulating anything highly improbable. The very opposite has to be said of any kind of intelligence."

But you confuse probability with plausability. There is no way to estimate the statistical probability of the existence of a second universe, or any number of additional universes. And of course there is no way to estimate the statistical probability that our universe is miraculous. So you cannot argue that the multiverse is statistically more probable than the miraculous universe. The most you can argue is that it is more plausible, and here is one good argument in your favour: we know that one universe exists, so why shouldn't there might be two or more? But science has never been able to confirm the existence of even a one miracle, so why should our universe be the first?

While this is the strongest argument you can make, it is hardly a knockout. Many will answer your questions as to why our universe should be the first miracle with the question, "Why not?" And your best reply will be, "because the multiverse seems more plausible to science."

From the Supreme Leader to the President Elect: Congratulations

An Open Letter from the Supreme Leader to the President Elect

Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i, Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution

to

Barack Obama, President-elect of the United States of America

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations on your victory in the presidential election. During the campaign you said that if elected, you would talk with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. I hope you will follow through on this campaign promise. To set the agenda, here is what I believe we should talk about, including some things on which we will have to agree to disagree, and some things on which we can agree.

1. Satan and Evil

The leaders of both of our countries have been guilty of demonizing the other. Let's talk about how to stop it.

Beginning with our revolution in 1978, Iranian leaders have found it useful to whip up domestic political support by branding America as the Great Satan. President Bush, for the same reason, found it useful to brand Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil. But please understand this: although our current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is given to rhetorical excesses neither he nor Ayatollah Khomeini whose Farsi words he was merely repeating verbatim, has ever said anything that can be accurately translated into English as "Israel will be wiped off the map." This is a mis-translation (apparently by the New York Times). If you don't believe me, please ask Hooman Majd, the Iranian-American who has been the simultaneous Farsi-to English translator for several Iranian presidential speeches at the UN, including those of Ahmadinejad. During Majd's interview with Terry Gross on her Fresh Air radio show of September 25, 2008, Majd says that a more accurate English translation of Khomeini's words is "Israel will vanish from the pages of time."

2. Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah

Also please understand this: the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine and create the state of Israel is seen by Iranians and most other people in the Middle East as a profound injustice -- a morally indefensible attempt by Europe, Russia and the USA to expiate their guilt over the Holocaust not at their own expense, but at the expense of the Palestinian people. The people of the Middle East, including the Iranian people, believe that Israel was the illegitimate creation of outside powers, and has no right to exist. And because we believe this, we hope and expect that it will eventually vanish from the pages of time.

The question of Israel's legitimacy is one on which the American and Iranian people will have to agree to disagree. However, we can agree that this question should not be resolved by force. Iran has given military support to Hezbollah and Hamas -- enemies of Israel. America has given military support to Israel -- enemies of Hamas and Hezbollah. By arming our respective allies, neither of us is contributing to a solution. This should stop, and we should talk about how to stop it. And neither of us should require the other to accept our position on the legitimacy of a Jewish state in Palestine as a pre-condition of starting these talks.

3. Iraq

In Iraq we share some common objectives: first, the withdrawal of American troops as quickly as possible without reversing the progress that has been made in recent months towards security and political reconciliation. In the longer term, we share the objective of seeing Iraq evolve into a state that is at peace with itself and its neighbours.

However, Iranians and Americans do not agree on the political culture that Iraq should embrace. While you and we agree that nations should be governed by law, you believe that the laws should be decided by the people, whereas Iranians believe that the laws have been given to us by the Almighty and cannot be altered or undone by the will of the people. This is another thing on which Americans and Iranians must agree to disagree.

As for Iraq, however, we can agree that the decision between these two legal and political cultures should be not be imposed by either Iran or America, but should be decided by the Iraqis themselves. If Iraqis decide for an Islamic state, America must accept this. The same applies to Iran in case Iraq decides for democracy. Our talks should lead to an agreement on how to make this happen. And neither of us should require the other to accept our position on the role of democracy in Iraq as a pre-condition for starting these talks.

4. Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power

The acquisition of nuclear weapons is prohibited by the laws of the Almighty as we understand them, and by the treaty law of nations who, like Iran, are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. For these reasons, Iran has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. The objectives of Iran's current nuclear program are civilian, not military, and we are prepared to prove it.

Unfortunately, in the America of Dick Cheney, John Bolton and Norman Podhoretz, it is a foregone conclusion that the purpose purpose of Iran's nuclear program is military. This is not a something these people are willing to decide on the basis of objective evidence and analysis. It is to be decided on the basis of conviction, using such arguments as "Iran is an inherently aggressive nation" (although we have not invaded a neighbour except in retaliation since 1739); or "Why would Iran want to use nuclear energy for power generation given its ample reserves of oil and gas?" (The answer, of course, is that because nuclear electricity is so much cheaper, it is highly inefficient to make electricity with oil and gas and forego the earnings these fuels could realize in the international market. For exactly this reason, the United Kingdom and Russia have been generating nuclear electricity for years.); or "Russia is willing to supply all of the reactor fuel Iran requires." (as if Russia can be considered a reliable, no-strings-attached supplier of energy to anyone).

There is a simple, objective way to test whether a nuclear program is civilian or military. So long as uranium enrichment does not exceed 3.5%, the program is civilian. Once enrichment rises above 3.5%, the program can only be military because reactor fuel requires only 3.5%, and there is no civilian application for more highly-enriched uranium.

These facts provide the basis for an agreement that will allow us to prove (or you to disprove) objectively that our nuclear program is peaceful. In his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2005, President Ahmadinejad invited America and other nations with expertise in civilian nuclear power to form a consortium to enrich uranium in Iran to supply fuel to Iran's planned nuclear power-plants. Were Iran's enrichment program carried out within such a consortium, the level of enrichment would be entirely transparent. Iran would also agree to intrusive IAEA inspections throughout the country to provide assurance that no nuclear fuel cycle activities were taking place other than by the consortium.

Cheney, Bolton and Podhoretz will scoff thus at this idea: "So you want us to help you get your enrichment centrifuges running smoothly and then, when you are ready, throw us out, raise the enrichment level from 3.5% to 90%, and build a bomb?" But guess what? We are getting our centrifuges to run smoothly without your help. Those of your experts who have expressed skepticism on this have consistently been proven wrong, and the IAEA has attested to this. This is not about what Iran is able to do without American help. It is about proving that our program is peaceful. We hope that in Barack Obama's America, objective tests will replace speculation, suspicion and prejudice on this issue. Let's talk about how we can prove to you that our intentions are peaceful. And please do not require us to suspend enrichment as a pre-condition for starting these talks.

To Omar al-Bashir: Go Away Or We'll Take Away Your Oil

Nicholas Kristof's excellent eight point plan for throttling Omar al-Bashir's criminally inhumane regime in Khartoum should include two further points. The tenth point has been articulated by Mark Helprin, who argues that that it would be relatively easy for American and allied air power to crush al-Bashir’s army, and starve the militias he has enlisted to do his work in Darfur, Abyei and the south. Helprin says, “Violating sovereignty is a matter of immense consequence and gravity. Then again, so is genocide.”

However, there is a ninth point that should be tried before Helprin's tenth: an international coalition should take control of Sudan's oil industry. Keeping Sudan's oil off the market will cripple the al-Bashir regime's ability to terrorize its people, and deprive it of the oxygen it needs to stay in power. When al-Bashir is gone, control of Sudan's oil industry will give the international community tools to oversee Sudanese national reconciliation that are lacking if the policy is simply to rain destruction on al-Bashir's military infrastructure from the air. As we learned in Iraq, after shock and awe, then what? 

Oil and Money in Sudan

Control of Sudan's oil wealth is of course an end in itself for al-Bashir’s regime. But second, the oil industry provides the regime with the means to fund the payroll for the military and para-military forces (Janjaweed, etc.) who carry out operations against its citizens, and to purchase the sophisticated military hardware (from China) to support these operations. Third, because the Khartoum government and the international oil companies who produce Sudan's oil have no intention of sharing the wealth with the indigenous population where it is produced, security of production can only be assured by deporting the indigenous population, a policy which al-Bashir has forcibly implemented on a large scale.  And fourth, although oil has not yet been discovered in Darfur, exploration licenses have been awarded in Janub Darfur, and the industry is optimistic about Darfur's potential. Khartoum and Janjaweed are not slaughtering people in Darfur for  reasons of ideology. 

Sudan's oil industry is truly the root of all of the nation's evils. 

Between 1999 and today, Sudan’s oil production has risen from zero to over 600 thousand barrels per day.  The market value of this at current prices is around $20 billion annually, of which $11-12 billion pours into the coffers of the state under production-sharing agreements with China's CNPC, India's ONGC and Malaysia's Petronas. Over 90% of these revenues derive from oil exports, which account for over 95% of the country's export revenue. The remaining $8-9 billion of market value annually, net of costs (operating, transportation, and recovery of acquisition costs and capital expenditure), is profit whch the four owners of the producing fields divide up according to their ownership shares: CNPC (46%), Petronas (32%), ONGC (25%), and the Sudanese state oil company Sudapet (6%).  

Under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the 21-year civil war between the Khartoum government and Sudan's southern provinces, now represented by the Government of South Sudan (GoSS) based in Juba, a revenue-sharing agreement was reached whereby the Khartoum government would receive 50% of revenues from production in the southern states, and retain 100% of revenues from production in the northern states.  Between 60 and 80% of Sudan's oil production is in areas under the jurisdiction of GoSS (depending on whether the disputed region of Abyei is counted as falling under the jurisdiction of GoSS or Khartoum), which would entitle GoSS to 30-40% of the state's oil revenue.

Taking Control of Sudan's Oil Industry

The terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea is the only means by which Sudanese oil can be exported. A naval blockade of the port would therefore be a fairly easy way for the international community to shut down Sudanese exports. The hard problems for implementing a strategy of taking control of Sudan's oil are diplomatic, economic, commercial and humanitarian. Fortunately there are reasonably good (but not perfect) solutions for all of these problems. And before we balk at the imperfections, we should bear in mind that a regime that slaughters its own people is a perfect problem.

The diplomatic and commercial problems are closely linked, since the state-owned oil companies of China, India and Malaysia own 94% of Sudan's oil industry. To achieve a diplomatic consensus behind the takeover strategy, it will be necessary to protect the commercial interests of CNPC, ONGC and Petronas. The economic problem is that  removing 500,000 barrels per day of Sudanese exports from the world market overnight could have seriously negative price consequences in the chronically tight world oil market. 

There is a way to address these problems:

1. A coalition of willing and able governments (for obvious reasons, the UN Security Council is probably not the most appropriate forum in which to try to organize this) would issue a formal request to CNPC, ONGC, Petronas and all other oil off-takers at Port Sudan to suspend exports until the government in Khartoum accepts terms laid down by the coalition (see below) or is replaced by one that will.

2. At the same time, OECD member governments would offer a time swap (oil today for oil tomorrow) to the Sudanese exporters, who would agree not to lift oil at Port Sudan, but instead to take delivery of equivalent amounts from OECD member countries' government-owned stockpiles.  Strategic stocks controlled by the governments of OECD member countries currently hold a little over 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil and products, enough to replace Sudan oil produciton for over eight years. The exporters would have the obligation to re-supply this oil to the OECD strategic stockpiles once Sudanese production is resumed, on terms that would include compensation for the exporters' lost time-value-of money.

3. Coalition governments would provide enforceable guarantees to CNPC, ONGC and Petronas that once Sudanese production is resumed, the companies' current license and commercial positions in Sudan would be preserved or, if not, the companies would be fully indemnified for losses by the coalition governments.

4. If less than 100% of Sudanese oil exporters accept these terms, coalition governments will impose a naval blockade on Port Sudan to ensure complete cessation of oil exports from the country.

The Bad Reason Why This is a Not a Good Idea

Critics of this proposal will argue that government-owned strategic stocks should only be used for the purpose for which they were acquired: to mitigate the consequences of a major world oil supply disruption. In the most likely (but highly unlikely) disruption event -- the shut-down of the Strait of Hormuz -- these 1.5 billion barrels would replace the lost production for around 90 days.  

Some would say that , as protection against the economic consequences of a shut-down of the Strait of Hormuz, a 90-day strategic stock would be about as effective as a sand castle against a tsunami. But whatever protection the strategic stocks offer against the consequences of such a highly unlikely event, why not give up some of this protection temporarily in order to degrade the al-Bashir regime's ability to terrorize its people? If governments were to use strategic stocks to replace Sudan's 500,000/day of exports for two years, and the Strait of Hormuz were then shut down, the remaining strategic stocks would last for 60 days rather than 90. The sand castle would only be two-thirds as tall.

Terms for the Post-Bashir Government

During the period of export suspension, coalition governments should compensate the GoSS for the lost revenue-sharing receipts under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.  Once al-Bashir or a successor Khartoum government has agreed to the terms specified below, alliance governments would lift the blockade and allow exports to resume. These terms would include the following:

• Alliance governments would establish an interim Oil, Boundary and Budgetary Commission ("OBBC") whose members would be appointed by the alliance governments.

• The Khartoum government would accept the North/South demarcation line specified by the OBBC.

• The GoSS 50% share of revenue from oil production in the South would accrue directly to the GoSS. The Khartoum government's share of revenues from production in both North and South  be paid into a fund controlled and managed by the OBBC.  

• The Khartoum government budget would have to be approved by the OBBC before any funds are released. The OBBC would have sweeping powers to audit all expenditures, and to suspend funding to any ministry found to be using funds other than in accordance with the approved budget. Funding suspended for this reason could be spent by the OBBC as it saw fit.

• The Khartoum government would not alter any of the oil production licensing or other commercial arrangements in place prior to the suspension of production, except with the consent of the OBBC. 

• The terms and conditions of all new licenses for oil exploration or production would have to be approved by the OBBC except in the provinces governed by GoSS.

These terms would give the OBBC powers both to protect the interests of foreign investors in the Sudanese oil industry, and to force the Khartoum government to spend its share of the pie for the benefit of the Sudanese people.

And if it doesn't work? Then by all means, let's proceed to point ten.

Dan Badger

London

April 28, 2008