The Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has stated his intention to “nominate myself” to be president of Egypt, but this memoir will not improve his election prospects. In personal terms, it’s hard to imagine anything less thrilling to Egypt’s street revolutionaries than ElBaradei’s accounts of his meals (“The food was very basic, with few choices: noodles, meat and kimchi; no fruit or salad”) and accommodations (“a worn, drab-colored suite consisting of a bedroom and a salon”) in places like North Korea. Nor will his fellow Egyptians be much intrigued by the details of his battles against nuclear proliferators. At the moment, the protestors have other priorities.
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.On the other hand, foreign policy leaders and wonks everywhere will find plenty in this memoir to stir debates about the most vital task for global survival — the need to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, especially to rogue states and terrorists.
That quest is ElBaradei’s story. For decades he was an intimate participant in dramatic nuclear proliferation confrontations that dominated headlines. He served as a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog and inspection arm, for 13 years (1984-97) before rising to its director-generalship in 1997. He resigned in 2009 after completing his third term and announced his interest in running against President Hosni Mubarak in the election scheduled for this year. In 2005, he and the agency were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their nonproliferation endeavors. Doubtless the Norwegian selectors, always ready to needle American hawks, also sought to reward his bold critique of the -American-led war against Iraq, especially since they drew ill-tempered ripostes from top officials in the Bush administration, particularly “Dick Cheney and his faction.”
In many ways, this David-Goliath confrontation over Iraq both drove ElBaradei in his years atop the I.A.E.A. and also inspired this memoir. The Iraq story is well known. The Bush team insisted that Saddam Hussein- — who had cheated on nukes and chemical weapons once before and been caught — had or was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and they demanded I.A.E.A. inspections of Iraq to confirm it. The agency conducted 247 inspections at 147 sites in Iraq from November 2002 until March 2003 and found no violations and no nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, the United States insisted on its own “evidence” and went to war. There can be no exaggerating the negative effects of this experience on world opinion toward the United States and upon ElBaradei himself as I.A.E.A. chief.
ElBaradei’s self-proclaimed mission became preventing another Iraq-type war. To this end, he significantly upgraded the agency’s inspection capabilities, building on the work of his predecessor, Hans Blix. At the same time, ElBaradei decried American counterproliferation efforts as warmongering. These campaigns provided the three themes of his memoir: the need to strengthen the mandate and standing of the I.A.E.A., to restrain sword-waving by the great powers (read the United States), and to emphasize diplomacy and collective security instead.
First, and not surprisingly, ElBaradei is well aware of the atomic energy agency’s handicaps. For one, its inspections are generally restricted to Non-Proliferation Treaty members and only to those sites declared by those members. Extending this limited mandate to other sites requires a strong push from the United Nations Security Council. The agency has only some 2,300 employees, a very tight budget of about $450 million and limited -intelligence-gathering resources. Of course, ElBaradei wants to buttress inspection authority and capabilities. He wants more intelligence--sharing from the big powers. He is particularly angry at Washington for not disclosing its intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility, and then for doing nothing to stop Israel from bombing that facility in 2007. He also pushes for tougher safeguards for nuclear material and for moving control of the developmental stages of the “fuel cycle” from national to international hands.
Leslie H. Gelb is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former senior official in the State and Defense Departments, and a former New York Times columnist.
没有评论:
发表评论