Posted on 02/17/2006 5:27:37 AM PST by Tolik
How many times have we heard the following whining and yet received no specific answers from our leaders?
"Israel has nuclear weapons, so why single out Iran?"
"Pakistan got nukes and we lived with it."
"Who is to say the United States or Russia should have the bomb and not other countries?"
"Iran has promised to use its reactors for peaceful purposes, so why demonize the regime?"
In fact, the United States has a perfectly sound rationale for singling out Iran to halt its nuclear proliferation. At least six good reasons come to mind, not counting the more obvious objection over Iran's violation of U.N. non-proliferation protocols. It is past time that we spell them out to the world at large.
First, we cannot excuse Iran by acknowledging that the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons. In each case of acquisition, Western foreign-policy makers went into a crisis mode, as anti-liberal regimes gained stature and advantage by the ability to destroy Western cities.
A tragic lapse is not corrected by yet another similar mistake, especially since one should learn from the errors of the past. The logic of "They did it, so why can't I?" would lead to a nuclearized globe in which our daily multifarious wars, from Darfur to the Middle East, would all assume the potential to go nuclear. In contrast, the fewer the nuclear players, the more likely deterrence can play some role. There is no such thing as abstract hypocrisy when it is a matter of Armageddon.
Second, it is a fact that full-fledged democracies are less likely to attack one another. Although they are prone to fighting — imperial Athens and republican Venice both were in some sort of war about three out of four years during the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century respectively — consensual governments are not so ready to fight like kind. In contemporary terms that means that there is no chance whatsoever that an anti-American France and an increasingly anti-French America would, as nuclear democracies, attack each other. Russia, following the fall of Communism, and its partial evolution to democracy, poses less threat to the United States than when it was a totalitarian state.
It would be regrettable should Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or Germany go nuclear — but not the catastrophe of a nuclear Pakistan that, with impunity de facto, offers sanctuary to bin Laden and the planners of 9/11. The former governments operate under a free press, open elections, and free speech, and thus their war-making is subject to a series of checks and balances. Pakistan is a strongman's heartbeat away from an Islamic theocracy. And while India has volatile relations with its Islamic neighbor, the world is not nearly as worried about its arsenal as it is about autocratic Pakistan's.
Third, there are a number of rogue regimes that belong in a special category: North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba, unfree states whose leaders have sought global attention and stature through sponsoring insurrection and terrorism beyond their borders. If it is scary that Russia, China, and Pakistan are now nuclear, it is terrifying that Kim Jong Il has the bomb, or that President Ahmadinejad might. Islamic fundamentalism or North Korean Stalinism might be antithetical to scientific advancement, but it is actually conducive to nuclear politics. When such renegade regimes go nuclear they gain the added lunatic edge: "We are either crazy or have nothing to lose or both — but you aren't." In nuclear poker, the appearance of derangement is an apparent advantage.
Fourth, there are all sorts of scary combinations — petrodollars, nukes, terrorism, and fanaticism. But Iran is a uniquely fivefold danger. It has enough cash to buy influence and exemption; nuclear weapons to threaten civilization; oil reserves to blackmail a petroleum hungry world; terrorists to either find sanctuary under a nuclear umbrella or to be armed with dirty bombs; and it has a leader who wishes either to take his entire country into paradise, or at least back to the eighth century amid the ashes of the Middle East.
Just imagine the present controversy over the cartoons in the context of President Ahmadinejad with his finger on a half-dozen nuclear missiles pointed at Copenhagen.
Fifth, any country that seeks "peaceful" nuclear power and is completely self-sufficient in energy production is de facto suspect. Iran has enough natural gas to meet its clean electrical generation needs for centuries. The only possible rationale for its multi-billion-dollar program of building nuclear reactors, and spending billions more to hide and decentralize them, is to obtain weapons, and thus to gain clout and attention in a manner that otherwise is not warranted by either Iranian conventional forces, cultural influence, or economic achievement.
Sixth, the West is right to take on a certain responsibility to discourage nuclear proliferation. The technology for such weapons grew entirely out of Western science and technology. In fact, the story of nuclear proliferation is exclusively one of espionage, stealthy commerce, or American and European-trained native engineers using their foreign-acquired expertise. Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran have no ability themselves to create such weapons, in the same manner that Russia, China, and India learned or stole a craft established only from the knowledge of European-American physics and industrial engineering. Any country that cannot itself create such weapons is probably not going to ensure the necessary protocols to guard against their misuse or theft.
We can argue all we want over the solution — it is either immoral to use military force or immoral not to use it; air strikes are feasible or will be an operational disaster; dissidents will rise up or have already mostly been killed or exiled; Russia and China will help solve or will instead enjoy our dilemma; Europe is now on board or is already triangulating; the U.N. will at last step in, or is more likely to damn the United States than Teheran.
Yet where all parties agree is that a poker-faced United States seems hesitant to act until moments before the missiles are armed, and is certainly not behaving like the hegemon or imperialist power so caricatured by Michael Moore and an array of post-September 11 university-press books. Until there is firm evidence that Iran has the warheads ready, the administration apparently does not wish to relive the nightmare of the past three years in which striking Iran will conjure up all the old Iraqi-style hysteria about unilateralism, preemption, incomplete or cooked intelligence, imperialism, and purported hostility toward a Muslim country.
In the greatest irony of all, the Left (who must understand well the nightmarish scenario of a fascist Iran with nuclear weapons) is suddenly bewildered by George Bush's apparent multilateral caution. The Senate Democrats don't know whether to attack the administration now for its nonchalance or to wait and second-guess them once the bombs begin to fall.
Either way, no one should doubt that a nuclear Iran would end the entire notion of global adjudication of nuclear proliferation — as well as remain a recurrent nightmare to civilization itself.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
what sane person could possibly argue with that?
Because the Israelis aren't nutters. Next?
"Pakistan got nukes and we lived with it."
The Pakistanis aren't nutters, either.
"Who is to say the United States or Russia should have the bomb and not other countries?"
We're not nutters, and neither are the Russians (with some notable exceptions on both sides, none likely to get anywhere near the button).
"Iran has promised to use its reactors for peaceful purposes..."
:-D )))
Deliberate, accidental release of 2nd strike damage projections thru the Int'l media might help.
They should be made aware the a MIRV or two will spoil your whole day.
Then unleash the Israelis. They have more to lose from a nuclear Iran than we do, and they're perfectly competent enough to stage a successful attack.
The aspect of a nuclear Iran will be an unimaginable threat. The diplomatic process,IMO, will give Iran more time to prepare and harden its targets before war commences.
great post..
there are = they are
ooops
Hanson's worst writing ever.
A dog's breakfast of insider commentary thrown together like dirty laundry.
I admit to being a "C" student in physics and I have a question that I suspect many people do.
What would happen if a nuclear weapon was detonated into the centuries of natural gas in Iran ?
Would we have the ultimate suicide bombing ?
He could've rambled on about the nuclear NPT and Iran's various violations of its sections, but instead he kept the reasoning simple. This is important because the world consists of more interested parties than international lawyers. From the simple to the complex, at every level, Iran is wrong on this issue and that's why the U.S. is finding traction in its efforts to build consensus at the IAEA.
The only part that makes me think this is “insider speak” is how he says the U.S. is not behaving at all like the imperial giant of Ahmadinejad’s and Chavez's rhetoric. He couldn’t be more right on this. Given the flood of banter in the MSM, this knowledge is drowned out and therefore not readily available to the average Joe. The truth is that our State Department folks have been and are unbelievably accommodating to the slightest protests from their Board of Governor partners in Geneva. I don’t think details are necessary to illustrate how important it is that the world understands what Iran is up to with its nuclear weapons program. This crisis has forced the United States to adopt a leadership role in international affairs and the democratic character of American foreign policy is blatantly showing there. Unfortunately, responsible governance doesn’t sell commercial spots on CNN, for that they need someone to F-UP.
VDH knows the Americans in Geneva are going to solve crisis democratically, not just for Americans, but for the world! VDH demonstrates this solemn truth without ramming satellite photos and legal jargon into his reader’s corneas. This kind of work is impressive and necessary in a multimedia effects world of, “if it bleeds, it leads”…
Dog’s breakfast?… I liked it.
color me paranoid, but militant islam (iran) with nukes scares me more than militant commies (N. Korea).
Me too... the commie leaders have great interest in preserving their own hides. The islamies on the other hand, have that "paradise for martyrs" thing going on.
they also are sensible enough in a scummy kind of way to use it as a bargaining chip, the iranians see the bomb primarily as way to convert Israel into a radioactive parking lot.
"The Pakistanis aren't nutters, either."
Huh? They're as fundamentally Islamic as anyone else in the Middle East and still practice sharia. Only through a military coup was Sharraf put into power. Once he departs, some maniacal "Ayatollah" will take over and have nukes at his disposal.
I agree and frightful however, there's nuclear armed India right next door who is probably more sensative to their (pakistans) every move than we are.
Actually, I think the higher probability of occurance is the creation of smaller, portable weapons (including dirty bombs) to be used in plausible deniable terrorist attacks. When DC blows up and you can't trace the source of the bomb, think Iran. Expect them to use processes to make the nuclear materials to appear to be from another source (based on trace elements). The mullahs know how our politicians work and will use the media against us in this scenario. Iran will deny giving the terrorists the bomb, our media will hamstring the politicians since there will be no "smoking gun" linking the bomb to Iran, and given the wrong administration, we could destroy our Constitution in the process.
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