Being An American I Am Watching These International Events Closely. Are You?

Now that the president is done sightseeing in Paris and is back home, we need to look at a few events we have been examining over the last weeks. What is happening in Guantanamo Bay, North Korea and Iran?

I don’ know about you, but it seems as if nothing has happened. Things seemed to have stalled on all fronts. For example, heard much about Gitmo lately? Not really. We hear now that things will go slowly on the January closure because Congress said no to the funding request and no to the idea of bringing the detainees to US soil. We know that nobody else wants them. We have had two Gitmo detainees released since Obama came into office. In Germany, Obama confirmed that it would take several more months to find out if Germany would take on the Chinese Muslim Uighurs. An informal request was put forth by the US on this topic. It could happen as Munich has a large population of Uighurs there and are willing to take them in. However, their interior minister has fought this. He wants more information about them. Europe may take up to forty of the Gitmo detainees. Obama has announced that fifty are ready to go. However, none of the 27 countries have agreed to take any now but agreed to share information among them. They ask why, if they are so safe and pose no threat, the US doesn’t take them all in. So no progress here. Gitmo will still be there come January unless something happens quickly in Europe or with the Congress.

What do we see with North Korea? This one I can’t understand. How long does it take to develop sanctions? They say they are studying it. Obama want to work with China and other allies to figure out how to stop weapons transfers from the North. He wants to develop a plan to interdict air and sea traffic if we suspect them of selling weapons or nuclear materials to our potential enemies. It looks like China may not be interested after all. If not done soon, Secretary Clinton said we might see a nuclear arms race start in the Far East as Japan could not stand by and let his go on. The UN is now considering re-casting North Korea as a terrorist sponsoring state. They were once listed as such but removed and given access to their frozen monies during the Bush era as a carrot to continue talks. We got nowhere on that one. Now Obama is looking for a legal means to reverse the Bush position.

Iran has no better news either. The French president had some nasty words for the Iranian president again after he called the Holocaust a “Big Deception.” Tehran is continuing in their development program and has increased its number of centrifuges significantly. Sarkozy hoped to open a dialogue with Iran when their diplomat visited with him. Nothing happened. Moreover, Iran gave a contract to China instead of France. Sarkozy informed Obama while he was in Paris of the events and suggested that in the fall they would have to look at tough sanctions for Iran.