The Fight Against Nuclear Arms Proliferation

In the past decade, numerous states have acquired nuclear weapons capability, most recently of course, North Korea, Pakistan and India. Others remain at the forefront of international attention for their efforts to obtain Nuclear Weapons. Iran, for example persistently defies international pressure to abandon its pursuit of Nuclear weapons, and indeed, provokes the west with bellicose talk of wiping Israel off the map and enveloping the western world in the veil of Islam.

Since the fall of the Soviet empire, nuclear proliferation has been a top priority of each successive U.S. presidential administration, as well as most other nations’ executives, the UN, NATO, etc. Nuclear proliferation is no new phenomenon to the world community. Clearly nothing short of military action can persuade a sovereign state to give up its right to possess nuclear weapons (Iraq), but even in Iraq, where Iraq was certainly prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons, the end goal was probably not sufficient justification for the hornet’s nest that followed (in all probability Iraq wasn’t even close to possessing nuclear weapons, or even biological or chemical weapons). Past U.S. administrations have negotiated with “rogue states” and done everything short of bending over to persuade these states to give up their nuclear ambitions. Pakistan and India were handed their nuclear weapons programs on a silver platter when, under the auspice of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, they were given the capability to develop their weapons programs by the means of seemingly benign nuclear power capability gifted to them from the west.

North Korea, as I am writing this short treatise, is demanding the nations involved in the six party talks (Russia, China, Japan, U.S., South Korea) provide NK with nuclear power as a contingency for its elimination of its weapons program. This approach is obviously not an option (Pakistan/India), nor is it an option for the other five to give in to the demands of a felon state like NK. The repercussions of NK’s pursuit and eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons would be felt globally. Even now, Japan is expanding its military capability at a rate unprecedented since the close of the Second World War. Indeed, Japan has in the last few days upgraded its relatively inconsequential defense agency to a full cabinet level ministry in reaction to the obvious threat perceived from across the Sea of Japan. The threat is clearly felt on the opposite side of the Pacific with talk of NK’s long range missile capability. South Korea is perhaps the most affected with its shared hundred mile long border. It is well known that the military force encamped along that border is merely a delaying tactic to slow the advancing forces should NK decide to invade the south. Ideally, the delay would last just long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

With NK and other rogue states in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons, what is to be done? We can’t invade, negotiation is folly, appeasement is even more costly in the long run, so what other options are there?

An economics professor I had while at BYU insisted that world trade is the safest route to assuring peace. Although I don’t entirely disagree with this notion, it seems to me that if it were the foolproof case, the First World War would have been averted since even until now the world hasn’t reached the level of international economic cooperation that it enjoyed prior to WWI. The Persian Gulf War would have been avoided since nearly every country in the world traded for oil with both Iraq and Kuwait. Trade and commerce is evidently a significant motivation by itself for two or more countries to go to war. From the big dog’s perspective, sure, there are no good reasons to go to war with your trading partners, but from the little dog’s perspective (as is the case with NK) belligerence and confrontation are rational means of securing one’s interests. Not to mention if a small country is led by a madman like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Kim Jung Il. Who is to say to that madman what is rational and what is not?

Another professor I had at BYU insisted that Democracy is the means by which the world of the future will avoid war. His reason for so insisting was that if people are given the choice, they’ll always choose peace over war. This inference is based solely on the assumption that the people care enough to educate themselves about the issues and not be swayed by every wind of doctrine and propaganda put forth by evil designing power brokers. Clearly this inference doesn’t apply to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. George W. Bush used media campaigns and propaganda to influence the ignorant in the United States to favor the invasion and only several years later did we learn for certain that the evidence used and fed like candy to the Hollywood worshiping American public for an impetus for war, was mostly bogus and highly inflated, largely fabricated to provide the American public with the anti-Iraq fervor necessary to fuel a full scale ground war. The American public is so spellbound by the free-speech Hollywood propagandists that it no longer recognizes fact from fiction nor the implications of war other than that it is glorious and exciting. No, democracy is not the be all and end all answer to world peace.

Although only a mediocre president, John F. Kennedy once stated, “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.” It is indeed a fact that America must, in conjunction with those other necessary aspects, i.e. economic cooperation and the peaceful spread of democracy, perpetually prepare for war to secure its own peace. Regimes with nuclear weapons capability will only increase in number and the more the U.S. and the UN fight against those regimes which actively seek nuclear technology, the more those regimes will fight tooth and nail to get it.

Perhaps the answer is a balanced attack on several fronts, diplomatic, military, economic, and by the means and use of information, to slow the process in order to insure America’s successful preparation for the inevitable eventual reality that hostile rogue states will obtain nuclear weapons. The U.S. comparative advantage is technology. We ought to be using the technology that we have to insure a secure future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Let NK, Cuba, Iran, and all the others remain in the stone age if they so choose, but let us make positive preparation for an eventual confrontation (and God willing our preparations will never prove necessary) by leaving those states with outdated and impotent weapons. Let us press into the future, striving for peace while preparing for war.