National Security First
Stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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.