Henry Kissinger has an opinion piece in today's Washington Post that attempts to give some good advice on the issue of nuclear proliferation.
The world is faced with the nightmarish prospect that nuclear weapons will become a standard part of national armament and wind up in terrorist hands. The negotiations on Korean and Iranian nuclear proliferation mark a watershed. A failed diplomacy would leave us with a choice between the use of force or a world where restraint has been eroded by the inability or unwillingness of countries that have the most to lose to restrain defiant fanatics. One need only imagine what would have happened had any of the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, London, Madrid, Istanbul or Bali involved even the crudest nuclear weapon.
Lately, the arguments coming from the left have been along the lines of "you have a better chance of being killed by (insert accident of choice) than of being killed by some guy living in a cave. I have seen this meme both here and on other blogs.
And it's a dumb argument. Because if the guy in the cave gets a nuke, the odds change instantly. Not in a favorable direction.
I'm not sure that Kissenger's strategy for negotiation that he lays out in the article would work or not. It very well might. On the other hand, it appears that Kissinger assumes Iran and North Korea will act rationally. I'm not completely sure of that fact. But it certainly appears to be an approach at least worth exploring. One thing he writes captures the entire issue, I think.
The issue before the nations involved is similar to what the world faced in 1938 and at the beginning of the Cold War: whether to overcome fears and hesitancy about undertaking the difficult path demanded by necessity. The failure of that test in 1938 produced a catastrophic war; the ability to master it in the immediate aftermath of World War II led to victory without war.
The debates surrounding these issues will be conducted in the waning years of an American administration. On the surface, this may seem to guarantee partisanship. But thoughtful observers in both parties will know that the consequences of the decisions before us will have to be managed in a new administration. The nuclear issue, capable of destroying mankind, may thus, one hopes, bring us together in the end.
Amen to that last sentence.
