Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
Another Idealist with No Solutions Opines...
The United States has no right to demand of other countries that they refrain from developing nuclear technology.
Until every country that already has them agrees to completely disable its nuclear capabilities, there is simply no logical or ethical rationalisation for threatening other countries for developing them.
Don't get me wrong: NO ONE should have nuclear weaponry. Including the U.S., mind you. It is the height of hypocrisy to threaten Iran for aspiring to the EXACT SAME STATUS as the U.S. itself.
The paternalistic, bullshit argument that we can't TRUST countries like Iran or North Korea or Pakistan with nuclear technology holds no water.
Don't get me wrong: We CAN'T trust any of those countries with nuclear technology. "Mutually Assured Destruction" was always a weak, flawed theory; it relied on the supposition that the leaders of those countries with nuclear capabilities would act rationally -- by NOT acting.
We can't trust the OURSELVES with it, either. Look at the Administration in power right now and ask yourself, "Can I trust these people not to fuck this up, considering they've fucked up EVERYTHING they've touched so far?" The answer is a pitifully obvious "No." We cannot trust our own government with nuclear capability.
And ain't it a shocker -- nobody ELSE does, either.
We are NOT the boss of the world. And if we're going to try to play Daddy, then we'd goddamned better well follow the first rule of parenting discipline: Set a goddamned EXAMPLE.
Not only do we already have nuclear weapons, we're developing NEW ways to blow whole segments of the earth to kingdom come -- and this despite having promised not to:
The Sunday Times Britain March 12, 2006
Revealed: UK develops secret nuclear warhead
Michael Smith
Full text of Trident report by Foreign Policy Centre (pdf)
BRITAIN has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the Americans, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The government has been pushing ahead with the programme while claiming that no decision has been made on a successor to Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent. Work on a new weapon by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire has been under way since Tony Blair was re-elected last May, and is now said to be ahead of similar US research.
The aim is to produce a simpler device using proven components to avoid breaching the ban on nuclear testing. Known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), it is being designed so that it can be tested in a laboratory rather than by detonation.
Gee, WHY DON'T THEY TRUST US? We find a fucking LOOPHOLE that allows us to join forces with England to develop new nukes, and then have the audacity, the temerity to wag our diplomatic finger at those countries attempting to keep up with us and maintain at least some semblance of autonomy on the world stage. When faced with a coalition of Western countries that invades a sovereign country preemptively with specious rationale (at best), these other countries have every reason in the world to look at our sanctimonious posturing and rationalisations askance, to say the least.
I may be naíve, but I'm not a fool; the answer is not to dole out the secrets of nuclear development to every country that wants them. It's complete nuclear disarmament. I don't know HOW you stuff all that shit back in Pandora's Box... I just know that's the only path to mutually assured non-destruction.
But unless the U.S. is willing to take the lead and play by the rules it signed onto, it doesn't have a goddamned leg to stand on when it rattles its nuclear sabre at other countries. (And consider, please, the ungodly IRONY of threatening a nuclear attack as punishment for a country daring to want nukes of its own...)
The world would be far worse off with nuclear technology in the hands of nations run by power-hungry madmen.
God knows it's already GOT at least one country run by a power-hungry madman, and look how THAT'S working out.