Non-proliferation is dead, long live er…
Immanuel “World-system” Wallerstein had some interesting things to say about Nuclear nonproliferation a couple of months back in NLR.
Nor did [US] intimidation work any better with potential nuclear proliferators. Both North Korea and Iran drew the conclusion from the American invasion of Iraq that the US could attack Iraq not because it had nuclear weapons, but because it did not have them. It seemed obvious to both governments that the surest defence of the existing regimes was to speed up the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. For tactical reasons, Iran denied this, as North Korea did not. The US asserted that both countries were in fact pursuing such programmes. But the US found itself weakened militarily and politically by the occupation of Iraq. It became clear that the US would not be capable of a successful land invasion of another such country. It might pre-emptively launch nuclear missiles, but the consequences of doing so seemed daunting. Indeed, it was now in less of a position to rally either Western Europe or East Asia to any effort to force the two countries to cease their programmes. The US was consequently in a weaker position to stop nuclear proliferation after the invasion of Iraq than before it, the opposite of neo-conservative projections.
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Looking ahead over the next two decades, what kind of trends are probable? The first is a complete breakdown of nuclear non-proliferation, with the rise of one to two dozen small nuclear powers in addition to those already in existence. The decline of US power plus the competing interests of the multiple power centres virtually guarantee that those countries which ended such programmes in the period 1970–2000 will resume them, no doubt joined by others. This will both act as a deterrent to military actions in many zones of the world and make the consequence of such actions much more dangerous.
Prescient stuff. There was also an excellent article (in Korean) yesterday by Hwang Chunho in Pressian on ‘Bush’s non-proliferation failure’ and its consequences for US domestic politics among other things. Meanwhile, for some light relief, Pakistan (yes Pakistan) decides to waggle its finger at North Korea.
