Flat-footed nuclear non-proliferation

Suzanne Nossel, guest blogging at the Washington Monthly, pontificates thus:

"This morning Iran opened up a plant that produces heavy water, in blunt defiance of UN insistence that it stop its nuclear weapons production activities."

Anyone else share with me this senes of disbelief that anyone can be so tone-deaf as to think they can talk like this without making otherwise moderate folks develop an instant determination to develop their own complete arsenal of nuclear-tipped ICBMs?

Ideally, of course, only we would have nukes, and we could reliably--and cheaply!--ensure that nobody else can get 'em.  It would also be a mild summer all year round, everywhere on the globe...

But wisdom lies not in the above snark about silly fantasies, but recognizing that people in every other country in the world would think exactly the same.  As the Indian and Pakistani tests showed, despite satellites, spies, and a ton of money, there's no way we can reliably know who is developing nukes or how far along they are.
Pompous bullshit the "defiance" of nations will just ensure that the Iranians develop nukes, and do it in a hurry at that.

I well remember China conducting nuclear tests (was the most recent round of tests late in the 80s?), and then getting all snippy when India condemned the "reckless disregard" for international opinion.  Something about "interference" in the "internal affairs" of a sovereign nation.  So when India conducted its own nuclear test (gosh, was it all of eight years ago?!?), I was thoroughly amused to read about China bitching about India's "reckless disregard".

Speaking to many of my friends back in India, it eventually became clear that really, there was consensus amongst almost all that the west and China has no fucking business telling India that they could not have nukes.  "Oh, yeah?  Well, fuck you, then!" is perhaps the best way to summarize the reaction.  In calmer moments, perhaps as many as a quarter of my friends would agree that it was silly to conduct tests.  It would have been much wiser to have our nukes, but continue the ambiguous public posture--where was the profit in the tests?  And a few were in a panic that now Pakistan was in a position to take that cannier position--have the nukes, but not declare it--and thus India would lose goodwill, trade, etc., all to no purpose.  Of course, Pakistan proved more dependable than that, following suit immediately .

The point of that rambling story is nuclear nations have no credibility when they ask other countries not to get nukes.  Why would they?  The only way out is to persuade.  Clinton, bless him, knew that bribing the North Koreans would be cheaper and more effective than cowboy bullshit.  The Shrub came along and proved the point.

And now I see that we are doing all in our power to help Iranian moderates line up behind the hardliners.  Pompous rhetoric from nuclear nations, which comes across as so hypocritical as to be almost a self-parody or caricature, will surely consolidate the Iranian population behind the Ayatollahs and the nutcase Ahmadinejad.

Why oh why can't we have Bill Clinton back!  We need a real grown-up, a man with some brains running the show, not the current set of clowns.

•  You can't develop nukes or we will nuke you

  really doesn't seem like a long term solution, does it?

  by buhdydharma on Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 12:01:04 PM PDT

  •  Live by the sword, die by the sword. nt

    -

    by epppie on Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 12:44:47 PM PDT

•  The only protection against nukes

  is the only one there has ever been.  You have to have an international system that works to negotiate and de-escalates conflicts and you have to have an international status quo that doesn't create desperate groups with nothing to lose.

  You need, in other words, common sense, common humanity.  

  We have turned away from almost any semblance of such a commonsense approach.  Instead of strengthening and improving the UN, we've treated it as our b8tch, or as dispensable.  Instead of working towards economic policies that bring all to the table, we've engineered economic policies that marginalize many or most.

  by epppie on Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 12:44:25 PM PDT

•  India's first nuclear test ...

  ...was 32 years ago - Operation Smiling Buddha - with a plutonium device manufactured at Bhabha Atomic Research Center. China's first test took place a decade earlier. India's last tests were in 1998. China's last nuclear test was in 1996.

  Unlike the United States, both India and China have pledged no first use. Here are the operative words of China's policy:

  "China undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under any circumstances."

  by Meteor Blades on Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 12:59:10 PM PDT

  •  Thanks!

    Ok, I guess the Chinese tests I remembered were from the 90s, not 80s.

    As to the no-first-use pledges, I guess during the Cold War the point of the western nuclear deterrence was that a Soviet conventional arms attack would be answered by a US nuclear response.  Necessary, in view of the big Soviet advantage in conventional armor.

    Today the whole situation is different, and the US would gain much diplomatically by making such a pledge.  It would lose nothing, since I can't imagine a scenario in which I--as a voting citizen--would condone a first-strike nuclear attack by the US.

    by amitxjoshi on Sat Aug 26, 2006 at 03:58:52 PM PDT