Midsize, non-nuclear powers enter world stage Posted by Helena Cobban

Midsize, non-nuclear powers enter world stage

Posted by Helena Cobban
May 17, 2010 10:50 AM EST | Link

Treading where the U.S. and its European allies have failed to make any significant headway, the leaders of Turkey and Brazil have now engaged personally in dealing with the globally important Iran/nuclear issue-- and they seem to be making real progress in de-escalating the tensions around it.

In Tehran today, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters his government has agreed to ship about half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for the further enriched kind of fuel required to run a medical reactor.

The deal comes as the culmination of personal visits undertaken to Iran by Turkish Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva.

If this deal goes through, Erdogan and Lula's diplomatic breakthrough will have a large impact not only on resolution of the globally vital Iran/nuclear issue itself but also on the whole face and structure of world politics.

The U.S., Britain, France, and Germany have all been pushing-- within the 'P5+1' forum established specifically a couple of years ago to add Germany's economic (and pro-U.S.) heft to the UN's traditional P5 leadership-- to impose a U.S.-designed solution on Iran, primarily by ratcheting up hostile economic actions against Iran backed up by a threat of military action.

Within the P5+1, the other two members of the P5, China and Russia, have adopted a fairly passive stance on the issue, showing neither any great support for the western countries' line nor any readiness to actively resist it.

Enter the leaders of Turkey and Brazil-- two significantly rising, mid-size countries whose current governments are generally pro-western but have also shown their willingness to challenge Washington where they judge their own core interests outweigh those of the U.S.

In contrast to the P5's membership group, which coincides exactly with the group of five nations "allowed" to have nuclear weapons-- for a while anyway-- under the terms of the worldwide Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Turkey and Brazil are determinedly non-nuclear states. Both have good relations, including military relations, with the U.S. But perhaps most importantly, the current governments of these two states enjoy a wide and indisputable democratic mandate from their own citizenries-- as well as considerable soft-power (diplomatic and economic) heft within the regions of which they are a part.

Therefore, though some European diplomats have apparently been a little huffy about the deal Erdogan and Lula achieved in Tehran, it would seem very counter-productive for the western governments to try to do anything active to try to undermine it.

That does not mean they won't try, of course. All the western governments have been subjected to great pressure by Israel to continue ratcheting up the pressure on Iran; and it seems doubtful that either that pressure or those governments' susceptibility to it will end overnight.

This is a great-- and potentially very hopeful-- story, in so many different respects. Watch this space.