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 merica
waits while our enemies slowly acquire the means to decimate us.
Countries like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea are almost certainly
perfecting their weapons of mass destruction. World opinion makers
would of course be horrified if we aggressively sought to restrict
dictators' armament rights. What if, however, the U.S. put her own
national security first? What would America's foreign policy look
like if our primary goal were to minimize the chance of the U.S.
being hit by atomic, biological, or chemical weapons?
Imagine that
you're facing your blood enemy. For the moment you are safe: You're
holding your gun, while your foe is unarmed. Slowly, however, your
enemy walks across the room to pick up his gun. What should you
do?
The U.S. should
use whatever means necessary to stop our enemies from gaining the
ability to kill millions of us. We should demand that countries
like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea make no attempt to acquire
weapons of mass destruction. We should further insist on the right
to make surprise inspections of these countries to insure that they
are complying with our proliferation policy. What if these nations
refuse our demands? If they refuse we should destroy their industrial
capacity and capture their leaders.
True, the world's
cultural elites would be shocked and appalled if we took preventive
military action against countries that are currently doing us no
harm. What is truly shocking, however, is that America is doing
almost nothing while countries that have expressed hatred for us
are building weapons of mass destruction. France and Britain allowed
Nazi Germany's military power to grow until Hitler was strong enough
to take Paris. America seems to be doing little while many of our
foes acquire the strength to destroy U.S. cities.
We can't rely
upon deterrence to prevent an atomic powered dictator from striking
at us. Remember, the Nazi's killed millions of Jews even though
the Holocaust took resources away from their war effort. As September
11th also shows, there exist evil men in the world who would gladly
sacrifice all other goals for the opportunity to commit mass murder.
The U.S. should take not even the slightest unnecessary chance that
some dictator, perhaps a dying Saddam Hussein, would be willing
to give up his life for the opportunity to hit America with nuclear
missiles.
Once a dictator
has the ability to hit a U.S., or perhaps even a European city,
with atomic weapons it will be too late for America to pressure
him to give up his weapons. His ability to hurt us will effectively
put him beyond our military reach. Our conventional forces might
even be made impotent by a nuclear-armed foe. Had Iraq possessed
atomic weapons, for example, we would probably have been unwilling
to expel them from Kuwait.
What about
the rights of those countries I have proposed threatening? America
should not even pretend to care about the rights of dictators. In
the 21st century the only leaders whom we should recognize as legitimate
are those who were democratically elected. The U.S. should reinterpret
international law to give no rights to tyrants, not even the right
to exist. We should have an ethically based foreign policy towards
democratic countries. With dictatorships, however, we should be
entirely Machiavellian; we should deal with them based upon what
is in our own best interests. It's obviously in our self-interest
to prevent as many dictators as possible from acquiring the means
to destroy us.
We shouldn't
demand that China abandon her nuclear weapons. This is not because
China has proved herself worthy to have the means of mass annihilation,
but rather because her existing stockpile of atomic missiles would
make it too costly for us to threaten China. It's too late to stop
the Chinese from gaining the ability to decimate us, but for the
next ten years or so it is not too late to stop some of our other
rivals.
If it's politically
impossible for America to use military force against currently non-hostile
dictators then we should use trade sanctions to punish nations who
don't agree to our proliferation policy. Normal trade sanctions,
however, do not provide the punishing power necessary to induce
dictators to abandon their arms. If we simply don't trade with a
nation other countries will sell them the goods that we used to
provide. To make trade sanctions an effective weapon the U.S. needs
to deploy secondary boycotts.
America should
create a treaty, the signatories of which would agree to:
· only trade with countries which have signed the treaty,
and
· not trade with any country which violates our policy on
weapons proliferation.
I believe that
if only the U.S. and, say, Germany initially signed this treaty
then nearly every other country would be forced to do so. For example,
if France did not sign, they would be unable to trade with the U.S.
or Germany. This would obviously be intolerable to France. Once
the U.S., Germany and France adopted the treaty every European nation
would have to sign or face a total economic collapse. The more countries
which sign the treaty, the greater the pressure on other countries
to sign. Once most every country has signed, any country which violated
America's policy on weapons proliferation would face almost a complete
economic boycott. Under this approach, the U.S. and Germany alone
could use our economic power to dictate the enforcement mechanism
of a treaty designed to protect against Armageddon.
Even the short-term
survival of humanity is in doubt. The greatest threat of extinction
surely comes from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
America should refocus her foreign policy to prioritize protecting
us all from atomic, biological, and chemical weapons.
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