Security Council Iran Politics and the New World Order After 9/11

UPDATED BELOW @ 5:35 PM.

The online edition of the Washington Post is running an Associated Press report by Anne Gearan with the headline "Rice Confident of U.N. Action on Iran". Gearan writes:

The swift decision to impose international sanctions on North Korea for its rogue nuclear test could grease the skids for sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"It really does help to create a momentum," Rice said after leaving four days of crisis talks in Asia in response to the North's test.

Contrast that with another Associated Press report, this one by AP writer Vladimir Isachenkov, running on the Yahoo! News site under the headline "Russia minister: No punishment for Iran". Isachenkov writes:

Russia will not allow the U.N. Security Council to be used to punish Iran over its nuclear program, the foreign minister said. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia was ready to discuss ways to pressure Iran into accepting a broader international oversight of its nuclear program, but added that "any measures of influence should encourage creating conditions for talks."

"We won't be able to support and will oppose any attempts to use the Security Council to punish Iran or use Iran's program in order to promote the ideas of regime change there," Lavrov said Friday in an interview with the Kuwaiti News Agency KUNA which was posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry Web site Saturday.

Juxtaposing these quotations throws into relief an interesting point about the politics of Iran's nuclear program at the Security Council.

Rice and Lavrov -- and their respective governments -- do not define the problem facing the Security Council in the same way. For Rice and the United States, the objective is to restrict Iran's nuclear program and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. For Lavrov and Russia, restricting Iran's nuclear program may be an objective, but so is constraining U.S. power and restricting its ability to confront Iran militarily.

U.S. media sources generally report on the politics of Iran's nuclear program at the Security Council as if the definition of the problem were uncontroversial -- U.S. press accounts generally assume that the issue before the Security Council is how the world ought to respond to the prospect of nukes in the hands of a menacing Iranian regime.

In reality, China, Russia and France (i.e. the permanent members of the Security Council other than the U.S. and the U.K.) may well perceive the central problem facing the Security Council in the following way: How to keep the United States engaged in the Security Council process and prevent it from operating as a rogue superpower outside of the institutional framework of the United Nations, while at the same time being careful to avoid any Security Council action that could be used by the United States as a justification or pretext for executing its fundamentally unilateral plans (especially military plans).

This may well be the true achievement of the Bush Administration: bringing about a New World Order in which the central organizing principle in international relations is constraining U.S. power.

UPDATE, 5:35 PM: The WaPo link now takes you to a different story by Anne Gearan, filed later in the day. As of 5:35 PM, versions of the original story can be found on the websites of ABC News, Forbes, CBS News and others (except that "grease the skids" has been changed to "clear the way").

Zombie Stenography: AP edition

Greg Sargent flags this jaw-dropping piece by the AP's Stephanie Reitz. The thrust of the AP report is that Ned Lamont's criticism of Joe Lieberman's 1998 Senate-floor condemnation of Bill Clinton is hypocritical, since a newly-disclosed 1998 email shows that Lamont "lauded the senator at the time for his eloquence and moral authority".

The problem, as anyone who bothers to read Lamont's actual email to Lieberman can see, is that the point of Lamont's email wasn't to "laud" Lieberman for bashing Clinton, but to urge him to cut out the Clinton bashing! Don't take my word for it -- read the email itself.

The AP article by Reitz joins yesterday's shameful entry by Jennifer Medina in the NYT, which similarly misleads readers about the plain meaning of Lamont's email. Both Medina and Reitz obviously based their stories on quotes, spin and framing supplied by the Lieberman campaign, and don't appear to have spent much time reading or analyzing the email itself. In short, this seems to be a classic case of political-campaign stenography by NYT and AP reporters, in which independent analysis and a concern for playing it straight with readers play little or no role.

Incidentally, I would love to know if the Lieberman campaign sent out a press release about the Lamont email. If so, I would love to compare it to the text of the AP and NYT articles.

Here is a note I sent to Medina about her piece yesterday -- if I can get my hands on Reitz's email address, I'll send her a similar note.

Dear Ms. Medina,

I just read your article titled "Lieberman Points Out a Turnabout by Lamont", and then read the actual email by Ned Lamont that accompanies your article on the on-line version of the NYT. Your article creates an impression of the thrust of Mr. Lamont's original note to Mr. Lieberman that is completely contradicted by a reading of the actual email.

Is it your sense, on reflection, that a reading of your article is likely to convey a fair impression of Mr. Lamont's email to a reader who does not independently assess the email itself? I would respectfully suggest that the answer is, clearly not. Even if not by design, your article is the functional equivalent of a Lieberman campaign press release.

I am not accusing you of deliberate bias. Rather, I am respectfully requesting that you be more careful and diligent in analyzing the material that you write about in this election cycle. It is not enough to confirm the accuracy of a quotation brought to your attention by a rival political campaign -- you must also take care to independently assess the "frame" in which the quotation is presented to you. In this case, your article misleads readers by presenting an accurate quotation in a misleading frame -- that is, by misleading readers about the overall content of the email from which the quote was clipped.

I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply.

Respectfully,

Eric [...]