Mark West

The policy of the United States concerning nuclear proliferation is at best, mystifyingly opaque. At worst, our position perversely rewards rogue states that engage in precisely the behavior we are ostensibly seeking to discourage.

Although the premise is seldom put so boldly, it is a certainty that nuclear weaponry is the great leveler.
Like a pistol, which makes David more than the equal of Goliath, the atom bomb brings the poor state nearer to military parity with the rich and powerful nation.

Flotillas of sophisticated cruisers, vectored-thrust missiles, integrated command-and-control systems and tactical air-superiority systems can all be stymied by the threat of a single well-concealed nuclear weapon, smuggled into some urban center in the back of a beat-up fruit truck.

The United States is thus a primary beneficiary of nonproliferation. The major industrialized nations already process nuclear weapons, and are already deterred by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. But less-industrialized nations, which might seek nuclear weapons to settle regional conflicts, or to deliver to non-governmental client organizations for use in asymmetrical warfare, are whom a rational foreign policy would seek to manipulate.

Unfortunately, the swagger-and-shout school of diplomacy, practiced with such felicity by the current administration, is ill suited to the more subtle needs of a viable non-proliferation effort. For nations led by rational individuals, nuclear weaponry will be pursued if it results in a greater reward than does the lack of such weapons. And so a nonproliferation regime, to be successful, must offer rewards for nations that eschew nuclear options, sanctions for those who pursue them.

But under the leadership of George W. Bush, what do the attentive leaders of the less-developed nations see?

They see Iraq, which had no nuclear weapons, bombed, invaded, its leaders hanged and the country ruined. They see Afghanistan, with no hope of atomic weapons, ground underfoot by U.S. might.

And they see North Korea, whose ìDear Leaderî is openly defiant of the United States. But North Korea has at least a rudimentary nuclear capability ñ and the United States has not invaded North Korea.

We have instead negotiated with ìDear Leader.î One can scarcely wonder that the Iranians have been installing centrifuges by the gross; the only mystifying aspect of Mahmoud Ahmadinejadís behavior is that he continually brays about it.

The lesson that is no doubt being learned by the tinhorn dictators of the world as they watch this sorry spectacle is that the atom bomb is the dividing line between dying of old age and getting strung up after a show trial.

We have guaranteed that they want the bomb and seek to get it, through our perverse and witless foreign policy.
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Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.