Hogwash

Carpenter’s piece is more of the ‘America caused the problem’ hogwash that seems to crop up whenever we face a foreign problem. He says our military record since the end of the Cold War caused the proliferation that we now desperately seek to curtail. He lists American attacks as if they were bolts from the blue, with no justification at all. He acts like this is even new behavior in the real world. Is the fact that a great power will wage war in its interests new? In a sense it is, we have mostly attacked for reasons pure and not for empire. Sure, taking down Noriega and ejecting Saddam from Kuwait were done purely in the interests of national security, but we did at least fight despicable creatures. His naming of “invading and occupying Afghanistan” in his list of invasions that ‘caused’ proliferation is particularly absurd given the 3,000 dead we suffered on September 11. Would bin Laden and his Taliban hosts really have retained nukes for deterrence if they had gotten them? Really now.

It is all such nonsense. As if states that are now on the verge of gaining, or have acquired, nuclear weapons, began to do so since the fall of the Berlin Wall. States that consider us the enemy have long tried to obtain sufficient military power to deter us. Witness Iran’s purchase of Chinese Silkworm anti-ship missiles in the 1980s to deter us from sending our Navy into the Gulf. Witness the pursuit of chemical weapons that many countries now have. Indeed, nuclear proliferation has long been a concern of ours. What has changed is that nuclear weapons are now old technology and hence are within reach of even the poorest country. Thug regimes want insurance that they can continue their thuggery without interference from the only country that can stop them. Nuclear arms are merely the latest means and are not the result of our post-Cold War policies.

And what about the track record of states that have not gone nuclear: namely Japan and Germany? Or the states that have abandoned nuclear programs such as Brazil and Argentina? Or the states that have abandoned nuclear weapons such as South Africa (which developed them in secrecy), Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Byelorussia (which inherited them from the Soviet Union)? Are these states more at risk from America now that they have no nukes?

Indeed, if the track record of the Soviet Union collapsing trying to maintain military might superior to America’s hasn’t convinced poverty-stricken states that nukes are the road to economic and moral collapse, I doubt our wars against threats and sickos are particularly significant in prompting a decision to go nuclear. Unless Carpenter thinks we should launch a preventative nuclear strike on North Korea and Iran as a lesson to nuclear aspirants that the nuclear road will result in their destruction rather than our deterrence.

We are so big, that even a foreign policy on the level of Iceland would cause thug regimes to worry about our capabilities. We are too big to ignore regardless of what we do. If Islamist hostility in the face of our repeated efforts to protect and aid Moslems can gain traction in the world, what on earth could we do to lessen the fears of thug regimes that their days are numbered? The key to regime survival is not being a bloodthirsty dictatorship. You’d think that would be the lesson.

Carpenter may not want America to do anything militarily more strenuous than patrol the Mexican and Canadian borders, but he shouldn’t blame us for what states would do anyway in pursuit of his isolationist policy.