Five days before President Obama was sworn into office, the outgoing president left him with a policy imbroglio of potentially staggering dimensions. Without meaningful consultation with the incoming administration, Bush signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates saddling the Obama administration with a critical policy issue that, in the nation's interest, would best have been left to the new administration's determination and timing.
Bush, as usual, marching to his own obdurate drummer, defiantly ignored significant congressional pushback on the deal. According to CNN, many in congress were and are seriously concerned that the agreement could spark an arms race prompting nuclear proliferation in the region. It did not go unnoticed that Iran was one of the U.A.E.'s largest trading partners, with the Port of Dubai being a key transit point for sensitive technology bound for Iran. This, while simultaneously having been one of the major hubs for the nuclear black market network run by Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan has admitted clandestinely spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea among others.
The Bush administration defended its actions by pointing out that the U.A.E. had committed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and had donated $10 million to establish an International Atomic Energy Agency international fuel bank. Of course one is too polite to mention that for the U.A.E. with its billions of oil income, $10 million is significantly less than pocket change, like leaving a nickel tip at Joe's Diner for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash fries, coffee and orange juice with the whole wheat toast well done.
The nuclear cooperation bill needs be sent to Congress for ratification. To date, President Obama has not signed off on the bill in spite of having been put in a position, by President Bush's actions, whereby not doing so would create a separate set of problematic issues.
To complicate the situation even further is the release of a tape submitted in a federal civil law suit filed in Houston. It shows an individual being brutally tortured by Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi's royal family. The 45 minute tape captures the victim being beaten, given electric shocks, and crushed by a car. According to the Times of London, "Jim McGovern, the democratic co-chair of the congressional Human Rights Commission, viewed the tape and said it was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen in my life." Only the other day, under pressure from Human Rights Watch, and responding to international public revulsion, the Emirati Public Prosecution has launched a criminal investigation. Previously, the government's policy had been to stonewall the issue with a glib declaration that the matter had been "resolved privately."
Senior U.S. officials well understand the uneasiness of U.S. lawmakers concerned that the United States would commit the nation to nuclear cooperation with a country where the rule of law is not respected and human rights violations are tolerated.
Other concerns have lingered. At the time of signing of the treaty, that is during the last days of the Bush administration, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, then the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs committee, introduced legislation to block the agreement unless the U.A.E. took remedial action, commenting that "serious concerns remain regarding the U.A.E.'s efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing as well as the effectiveness of their export control system."
As with all matters in the region, big dollars are at stake, or at least what we thought to be big dollars before the age of TARP. The initial reactor work will range around $20 billion. Both GE and Westinghouse, according to the Wall Street Journal ("Arab State Launches Nuclear Bid," April 2, 2009), are among the firms seeking contracts. Certainly their voices will be heard as well. How it all plays out remains to be seen. One is prompted once again to paraphrase Lenin: "The last capitalist will sell us the rope that hangs him," but sort of on a somewhat larger scale.