INFOTERRA: Op Ed: The Nuclear Dimensions of US Foreign Policy
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-carpenter8jan08,0,820127.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
Los Angeles Times:
January 8, 2003
COMMENTARY
Forcing Foes Into a Nuclear Corner
U.S. policies may have spurred some smaller nations to seek the
ultimate weapon.
By Ted Galen Carpenter
Washington's goal of nuclear nonproliferation has suffered two serious
setbacks in recent months. North Korea has admitted to pursuing a covert
uranium enrichment program and is moving to reactivate a nuclear reactor
in violation of the agreement it signed in 1994 to freeze its nuclear
weapons program. And in December, U.S. intelligence sources reported
suspicious activity at two possible nuclear sites in Iran.
What officials in Washington do not recognize is that such actions are a
logical, perhaps even inevitable, response to the foreign policy the
United States has pursued since the end of the Cold War.
Consider the extent of U.S. military action since the opening of the
Berlin Wall in 1989: The United States invaded Panama and overthrew the
government; devastated Iraq in the Persian Gulf War; forced the government
of Haiti from power by threatening to invade the country; bombed the
Bosnian Serbs into accepting a peace agreement; bombed Yugoslavia into
relinquishing control over its province of Kosovo; invaded and occupied
Afghanistan; and is now threatening to attack Iraq and oust its
government.
Moreover, in his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush
explicitly linked both North Korea and Iran to Iraq in an "axis of evil."
It would hardly be surprising if Pyongyang and Tehran concluded they would
be next on Washington's hit list unless they could effectively deter an
attack. Yet neither country could hope to match the conventional military
capabilities of a superpower.
The most reliable deterrent -- maybe the only reliable deterrent -- is to
have nuclear weapons.
In other words, U.S. behavior may have inadvertently created a powerful
incentive for nuclear weapons proliferation -- the last thing Washington
wanted to occur.
American officials dismiss the fears of countries such as North Korea and
Iran as manifestations of paranoia. That is true to a point. When the
Creator passed out paranoia, the North Korean and Iranian political elites
got in line twice. But as Henry Kissinger once pointed out, even paranoids
have real enemies. And there is little doubt that the United States is the
enemy of both countries.
Pyongyang and Tehran probably noticed that the United States treats
nations that possess nuclear weapons quite differently from those that do
not possess them. That is not a new phenomenon.
Just six years after China began to develop nuclear arms, the U.S. sought
to normalize relations, reversing a policy of isolation that had lasted
more than two decades.
U.S. leaders show a nuclear-armed Russia a fair amount of respect even
though that country has become a second-rate conventional military power
and a third-rate economic power.
And Washington treats Pakistan and India with far greater respect since
those countries barged into the global nuclear weapons club in 1998.
Contrast those actions with Washington's conduct toward nonnuclear powers,
such as Iraq and Yugoslavia.
The lesson that North Korea and Iran learned is that possessing a nuclear
arsenal is the way to compel the United States to exhibit caution and a
certain amount of respect. That is especially true if a country has an
adversarial relationship with the United States.
U.S. leaders need to face the reality that U.S. foreign policy may cause
unintended (and sometimes unpleasant) consequences.
Those people who cheered such initiatives as the expulsion of Iraqi forces
from Kuwait, the ouster of the dictatorship in Haiti and the
nation-building crusades in the Balkans, and who now thirst for war with
Iraq, need to ask themselves whether increasing the incentives for nuclear
proliferation was a price worth paying. Because greater proliferation is
the price we are almost certainly going to pay.
*
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies
at the Cato Institute, is the author of "Peace & Freedom: Foreign Policy
for a Constitutional Republic" (Cato Institute, 2002).
* * *
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
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