Equivalence And Fairness

Joseph Cirincione, who you should listen to on all things nuclear proliferation, worries about the Bush administration's civilian nuclear energy programs:

"It gives countries, under the guise of civilian nuclear programs, the ability to make one of the key ingredients for a nuclear bomb - plutonium," said Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning Washington think tank. "And they can stockpile it in large quantities. How are you going to tell Iran that they can't do this if you're promoting it yourself?"

National Review John Hood takes offense at the "moral-equivalence mentality" this involves and says that "because Iran is run by a disgusting cabal of terrorism sponsors and Holocaust deniers, telling its dictators that their nuclear program won’t be tolerated is not all that difficult." This gets perhaps to the very core of the problems with conservative foreign policy. To be sure, any of us when we're sitting around the living room shooting the shit can draw distinctions between an Iranian nuclear program and, say, a Norwegian one. The Norwegians get the benefit of the doubt for a variety of reasons, and a Norwegian military nuclear arsenal would be less worrisome than an Iranian one. Nevertheless, if you expect to have an international system that countries are going to cooperate with it has to be governed by neutral rules and not John Hood's gut sense of what's right or wrong.

It's extremely hard -- probably impossible -- to have a viable non-proliferation regime without very robust levels of cooperation from the overwhelming majority of countries on earth. To get that cooperation, we're going to need a system that other countries can live with. Not a system where the US government just decides which countries are problems and which ones aren't. A system where the same rules apply to everybody -- Israel, India, Brazil, Iran, Italy -- and in exchange the rules are actually enforced. Similarly, it'll have to be a system where the existing nuclear powers, like the United States, live up to our commitments to move toward disarmament.

The Hood alternative would work if and only if repeated application of unilateral military force were a viable enforcement mechanism. But it isn't, so it isn't.

Comments

A meta-complaint: Why do we need to "read more" to read the last 2 paragraphs of a 5 paragraph post? Unless there are pictures on the flip or some other kind of bandwidth hogging thing, put it all on the front page.

Posted by alkali | September 6, 2006 10:55 AM

I've been making this same argument in a coments thread over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and not making much headway.

The liberal vesion of this is not, "bad countries shouldn't have nukes" but "countries that don't already have nukes shouldn't get them," which isn't any more principled but at least doesn't depend on anyone's gut sense. The very smart Rob at LGM seems to think this is OK. Be nice to see Matt engage with him -- arguing with your intellectual equals is, in general, a better use of your energy than banging on another NRO pinata.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 6, 2006 11:16 AM

Who cares? Your system is unachievable, so its not a real alternative. Thus, we're stuck with:
1) a system in which Iran has nukes
2) a system in which the US says Iran can't have nukes because they are bad
3) a system in which an international system, agreed upon by everybody, that is applied fairly, stops Iran (and Brazil and India and Italy and Israel) from getting nukes, and one in which the US, China, Russia, France, and England give up their nukes.

3) is impossible. So which is preferable, 1) or 2)?

Steve

Posted by Steve | September 6, 2006 12:02 PM

Well, more or a choice between (1) or (1 and 2)

Posted by wml | September 6, 2006 12:11 PM

Similarly, it'll have to be a system where the existing nuclear powers, like the United States, live up to our commitments to move toward disarmament.

Please, please, PLEASE have the Democrats run on this platform. I begging you, Matthew! Can't you do anything to get the Democrats to make a major push for this prior to November?

Posted by Al | September 6, 2006 12:26 PM

I agree with the foregoing posts, with respect to the theme that the preferred regime (nuclear nonproliferation) is practically unachievable. This is true because we no longer live in the 20th century, when it was feasible that non-dominant powers would not have the technical knowledge and engineering ability to (a) enrich plutonium, (b) miniaturize a warhead, and (c) deliver it. That was an accurate way of viewing this starting about 50 years ago, but the rest of humanity has caught up with where we were at the time of the Manhattan Project. So what do we do? Well, all I can come up with is we have to go back to the traditional deterrence regime. Everyone now has, or can produce, the longbow, cannon, ironclad ships, or whatever. No more technological advantage. So we must assume that everyone has or will be able to produce the nuke in a frighteningly short period (10-20 yrs) period of time. One suggestion might be to sign mutual defense agreements with a lot of states. The result might not be pretty in the short term (a growing probability of conflicts based on anticipatory self-defense), but what else can we do??

Posted by DC | September 6, 2006 2:57 PM

DC, it may be true that there are no great technical obstacles to proliferation, but that doesn't mean nonproliferation is impossible. it just means rules are needed, that are agreed to by all the relevant actors. Just like on climate change -- there's no technical obstacle to every country on earth burning up fossil fuels as fast theyc an, but that doesn't mean it has to happen that way. Ditto for trade -- whetehr your preferred regime is free trade and free capital movements, or something more regulated, everyone agrees the way to get there isn't by mutual deterrence but by some rules-based regime.

Obviously, countries are ging to find a nuclear deterrent more necessary when they don't feel they can depend on international agreements. (One of the less-noted harms caused by the Iraq war is that it made a nuclear deterrent much mroe attractive to any country that may find itself on the bad side of the US.) If we really think Iranian (or Pakistani or Korean or Venezuelan or whatever) nukes to be so threatening, the solution is to find a set of rules that forbidding them that is acceptable to those countries, which means it has to bind the US as well. And if you say that no limits on US nuclear weapons or freedom of action are acceptable, well then, you must not be that worried about proliferation after all.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 6, 2006 4:25 PM

Point well taken. My response is that I think a "realist" approach is the only appropriate strategy to address nuclear threats in 2006, as nonproliferation is, in effect, impossible to achieve. Please forgive me when I state my belief that to believe otherwise is pollyanaish. I simply don't believe that almost any state with a practical capability to create a nuclear weapon will NOT seek to do so. There are too many benefits -- culturally and militarily -- not to do so. Some support for my perspective would be found if we were to discover that Brazil has a clandestine military nuclear program. We don't know if the Brazilians have one right now -- but I would be quite surprised if they do not.

Posted by DC | September 6, 2006 6:56 PM

I suppose part of the problem is that while "Iran should be subject to different rules because they're evil" makes perfect sense to us, it's not really all that convincing to Iran.

Posted by Andrew Edwards | September 6, 2006 10:15 PM

"The very smart Rob at LGM "

The fact that he comments on the most bigoted blog on the internet this side of "godhatesfags.com" is more than enough reason for Matt not to debate with him. Although I suppose you could argue that Matt ought to be guided by morally neutral rules rather than my sense of right or wrong.

"Please, please, PLEASE have the Democrats run on this platform."

Try to talk policy to some people, and all they can think about is spinning the issue to win the election. Thank you, Al, for giving us such a perfect example of what's wrong with the GWB approach to foriegn policy!

Posted by rea | September 7, 2006 5:31 AM

Technological developments since the 1980s have also made copyright protection astronomically more difficult than it was when the Bern Conventions were drafted. And yet somehow the Conventions are still in force, and everyone, especially the Mickey Mouse-protecting trademark fanatics in the GOP, throws their full weight behind getting China, Vietnam and India to sign up and comply.

Yet for some reason the nuclear nonproliferation treaties are apparently 90-pound-weakling treaties which are rendered faint and wan by advances in technology.

I really enjoyed the John Hood quote, though. I'm sure that if we simply went to the Iranians and explained that the reason they can't have nukes is because they are Holocaust deniers and sponsors of terrorism, they would understand, and give up their enrichment program. It's such a persuasive argument tell someone that they can't do the things we do because they are bad and we are good.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 7, 2006 6:10 AM

"The very smart Rob at LGM "

The fact that he comments on the most bigoted blog on the internet this side of "godhatesfags.com" is more than enough reason for Matt not to debate with him.

Whoa, what's this? Please explain.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 7, 2006 10:12 AM

Oh, I get it -- rea, you thought I wrote LGF. No no no, LGM is Lawyers, Guns and Money, a quite good group blog whose politics are similar to (maybe marginally to the right of) Matt Y.'s.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 7, 2006 10:15 AM