Learning to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Here we go. Silly people! Don't worry about Iran going nuclear and triggering a nuclear arms race in the Middle East! I mean, really. As the author asks about those with that worry, "Have they even been to Egypt lately" and seen how ramshackle that place is?

Yeah. Almost as ramshackle as Pakistan. And do I have to mention North Korea? Although to be fair, I've never been to any of them.

In the end, the author's dismissal of the risk rests on the idea that it will be a slow race if it takes place.

I guess if we won't face a Middle East armed with nuclear weapons until 2030 it isn't a problem.

And nobody who goes nuclear early will ever sell their technology or have it stolen, advancing that supposedly comforting notion that any potential proliferation is many years off.

And if somebody hasn't wanted nukes when Israel has been the only one to have them, nobody would change their mind about the need to have nukes if Iran under a mullah regime gets them.

By the time 2030 rolls around--if nothing changes the time frame--these guys will be writing stuff about how stability will be enhanced in the Middle East if more people have nukes. Maybe Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) will be recast as Having Atomic Proliferation Policies Is Everyone's Right! Who can argue with a HAPPIER policy unlike that ugly MAD theory?

Hey, let's test that confidence in nuclear proliferation's limits! Let's encourage Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons. Would that be spiffy, too? Would that make China happier? Or at least not worry?

Sometimes Foreign Policy has some interesting stuff. But all too often I just shake my head in wonder at how dim their writers can be.