Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Foreign Policy Notes

Fifty years ago, the "Arab World" was ruled for the most part by hereditary monarch, inept, debauched and anti-semitic.
Twenty Five years ago the Arab was ruled by a hodgepodge of fidgety military autocrats, nationalistic in scope and again, anti-semitic.
Comes the "Arab Spring" and the "Reign of the Colonels" is ended so of course the Neocons are in a lather of fear over the coming ascendency of "Islamofascism".
Well... If King Farouk and Colonel Nasser couldn't destroy Israel, then what kind of odds should we give the Grand Imam or whatever Believing Mind is brought to power?
The response to this "because Iran wants the bomb and the bomb changes everything".
True
But not neccessarily in ways friendly to Tehran.
Nukes make dandy targets for other nukes, and entering the nuclear club today, means you are competing with actors that have a sixty year jump on you in the stratetic weapon's department.
Small nuclear actors have problems, they don't necessarily have the geography or technology to make credible threats of Mutually Assured Destruction.
They can make good "doomsday threats" though ,North Korea makes them every day, but that makes NK a problem not a world class playa nukes or no nukes.
My concern truly is that nuclear weapons might well be introduced into a national environment riddled with serious ethnic and class conflicts, that is a destabilizing factor to be sure.
But if you think Iran or the "coming wave of Islamofascism" can rule and or blackmail the world once they get the bomb think again...It hasn't guaranteed anyone's hegemony since 1944 and likely it never will.
"Deterrence is tested by things that never happen" so said Henry Kissinger in more comfy bipolar times.
The same can be said about nuclear non proliferation.

Just sayin'.

No comments :