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Adil Najam: US rely on the mercy of the merciless to prevent Armageddon
2004-02-20
Hat tip LGF.
President Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) provides the right solution, but to the wrong problem. Nuclear proliferation is merely a symptom; the real issue is the nuclear weapons themselves. And, in this sense, the PSI is no more than a Band-Aid, and a quite small one at that. The recent scandal in Pakistan, where a mad corrupt scientist sold nuclear secrets for profit, only demonstrates that such traffic is much too lucrative to be stopped by increased policing. For 60 years, ever since Hiroshima, the U.S. and the world have tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We’ve tried treaties, economic sanctions and moral persuasion. And we’ve failed. We could not stop the Soviets from getting nukes. We chose not to resist, and actually ignored, Israel’s nuclear program. We looked the other way when India went nuclear and, thus, could do little when Pakistan followed suit. And we merely fumed when North Korea flexed its nuclear muscles. In the meantime, we have built and maintained the world’s largest nuclear stockpile.
Ever hear of Mutually Assured Destruction™, keanulint-brain?
Can we contain Pakistan’s nuclear program? Yes, we can. But first we will need to contain India’s. To do that, however, India will need to see China’s program rolled back. How does that happen? For that, we will need to start looking at our own. As my grandmother used to say, "If you point one finger at someone, at least three will point back at you." No one said this was easy! Are we really surprised that the rest of the world rolls its eyes when we pontificate about the dangers of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in general - as when Bush referred to them as "the greatest threat to humanity today"? What other countries doubt is our sincerity. It is hypocritical to tell the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are good enough for us, but not for them. We can’t have a world part nuclear and part not.
PSI prevents that scenario, asshat.
Perhaps the fathers of our own atom bomb - Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues from the Manhattan Project - were correct in believing that the only real way of dealing with nuclear proliferation is to ban nuclear weapons altogether. Everywhere.
When nukes are outlawed only outlaws will have nukes.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei understands this reality. He recently wrote: "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use." We must insist on a nuclear-free world. We must make a sincere commitment to it at home and demand it abroad. Rather than better mousetraps for proliferating nations, we need an approach to eliminate nuclear weapons. Some may argue this is unrealistic. But no more so than the misguided, even naive, hope that a feel-good Band-Aid called PSI will make the world a safer place.
He said that a ban on nukes would make even rogue states disarm. Immediately, his harp bent until a string snapped.
Adil Najam is an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University

Adil's making the assumption that once nuclear weapons have been developed they can be undeveloped. The Greeks knew that once you take some actions they can't be undone — ask Pandora, or more to the point, look in her box. Prior to WWI chemical weapons had never been used on the battlefield. Despite the fact that there were treaties barring their use, treaties that rose out of the experiences of both sides, both sides in WWII maintained chemical defense units. The Japanese, I believe, did use chem weapons in China. More recently, a group of nut cases in Tokyo used a chem weapon in a subway in Tokyo and Sammy and the Iranians gassed each other in their war, after Sammy started it. Sammy also famously did in the Kurds with chem weapons, which I believe might be the first documented use against a civilian target. (Hitler doesn't count — the gas wasn't used in military operations.) We've also been actively looking for al-Qaeda chem weapons and finding indications of them. And yet the treaties remain in force.

The same principle applies to nuclear weapons. Even if all sides disarm themselves and destroy all stocks of weapons, rogue states and rogue organizaitons remain not only a possibility but a probability. A rogue state, like Pakistan or Iran, is aware of and probably even dimly comprehends the concept of assured destruction, whether mutual or not. Rogue organizations, like al-Qaeda and its subsidiaries, discount the concept. Being stateless, it doesn't matter to them if somebody's state is destroyed. They expect to be able to move on to the next one. Settling in someplace like Afghanistan or Mali, where there's nothing much to destroy, simply results in holding somebody else's population hostage. The only threat of destruction that will actually stay them is someplace they care about: Mecca, Medina, Qom, Najaf, Karbala, or one of the other seven million holy places of Islam. And destroying them brings its own downside: it doesn't get us the perps, and it cheezes off the great Islamic unwashed.

Luckily, we have a weapon that's better suited to dealing with the enemy. The U.S. military has shown itself in three campaigns to be an unstoppable force, and not once in Gulf War I, Afghanistan, or Gulf War II has it had to resort to unconventional weapons. The only thing that can stop it would be a force of similar size, capability, and level of coordinated command and control. There ain't no sech animal as of today, and the only thing I can think of that would cause it to gag would be the Chinese PLA — based purely on size. Certainly a gun-waving, eye-rolling mass of Iranian cannon fodder doesn't qualify. Nor do any other of the various "armies" of the Middle Eastern states, geared as they are toward suppressing their own people rather than winning wars.
Posted by:Steve from Relto

#5   I can't remember what wise man said it first but here it is: "To have peace, you must prepare for war".
Posted by: Brian   2004-2-20 4:11:18 PM  

#4  Nations make treaties and agreements through negotiations. Negotiations require some semblance of goodwill and a commitment to honor the proposed agreement. There are some nations and people that will not honor agreements, so instead of negotiations one has to use the threat of a big stick. Depending upone someone's goodwill only is suicide. One must always verify. Who knows, a change in govt could bring in someone who will try to go around an agreement. Of course this would not apply to France, as they are always consistant....
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-2-20 2:57:12 PM  

#3  What a f*cking moron. Let's tell all the thugs in the world we're no longer armed. What planet does this idiot live on? Again, what a f*cking moron.
Posted by: AllahHateMe   2004-2-20 1:59:24 PM  

#2  This entire article goes under the assumption that all of the people trying to get nukes are rational and perhaps just a bit misunderstood.

Fact is its a dog eat dog world and some of those dogs have rabies. The US is the Alpha dog, the one keeping many of thelm in check, the one many of them want to take down. The US would be foolish to defang itself under those conditions.
Posted by: ruprecht   2004-2-20 10:16:54 AM  

#1  Ban nuclear weapons and make the world safe for conventional warfare.
Posted by: Hiryu   2004-2-20 10:08:57 AM  

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