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Friday, June 27, 2008

“Nucular” Weapons End-All, Be-All of Foreign Policy?

posted by on June 27 at 12:35 PM

Posted by (brand-spanking new) News Intern Roselle Kingsbury

North Korea destroyed a cooling tower at its controversial Yonbyon reactor site today, one of the latest steps the state has taken to meet an agreement made with the United States and five other countries in late 2007.

The Bush administration justified invasion of Iraq with seemingly erroneous accusations of harboring nuclear weapons, only to find that they could not be found. Are nuclear weapons really the issue here, especially when the concept of mutually assured destruction has effectively nullified the use of nuclear arms anyway?

Both Japan and South Korea are concerned that the US is too lenient on the communist state. Japan worries about ballistic missiles, and South Korea calls for more attention to widely reported human rights abuses, among other issues.

So far, the strategy of “nuclear weapons = worst thing ever” hasn’t really been great foreign policy. One can only wonder what the next president will do with this outdated strategy.

Well, we know McCain’s take on them, anyway.

RSS icon Comments

1

It's only mutually assured destruction if the other side doesn't want to get annihilated by nukes either. The Soviets didn't want to be wiped out, so MAD worked. When you're dealing with regimes that are basically Shiite Death Cults (Iran) or that obviously don't give a fig about the condition of their population (NKorea), you can't count on MAD to prevent nukes from being popped off.

Posted by mpc | June 27, 2008 12:55 PM
2

Also how is there MAD is when someone says we will nuke the shit out of Iran if they nuke Israel, and everyone goes "ooooh oooh! Too warmonger-y! Bad candidate bad candidate! Evil! She should be all peace talking like the other one and only HINT at any kind of violence because you know -- whatever you talk about it means you think about it and whatever you think about, the Universe makes it happen like it says in the Law of Attrraction! So please don't talk about what to do if diplomacy fails you are no different than evel Bush if you do!"

Posted by PC | June 27, 2008 1:19 PM
3

When are we going to ask Israel -- our favorite rogue nuclear state -- to disarm?

Posted by goyische kopf | June 27, 2008 1:23 PM
4

Probably when someone has definitive evidence they actually possess nuclear weapons.

(Not saying they don't, just saying they've never acknowledged they DO, and SFAIAAL, nobody has actually PROVEN they do.)

Posted by COMTE | June 27, 2008 1:33 PM
5

@1: also required for MAD is enough distance that a first strike can be responded to before it actually hits. If you're talking about neighbors (say, India-Pakistan or N. and S. Korea) it doesn't work.

Posted by Eric F | June 27, 2008 2:06 PM
6

Just make a big deal (real or not) about stationing our own nukes in neighboring countries. Their own people will not care for having , say, one hundred nukes pointed at them because their government has a wrong headed policy. Eventually, they will be forced to come to their senses without a shot fired.

Posted by Vince | June 27, 2008 2:13 PM
7

iran's a shiite death cult? interesting.

Posted by skye | June 27, 2008 4:48 PM

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