Friday, May 13, 2005

Israel's Cassandra: No diplomatic solution

Caroline Glick says plainly what The Monk thinks has become the elephant in the living room of nonproliferation: there is no diplomatic solution to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and a nuclearized North Korea that continues to process nuclear materials.

Iran expert Michael Ledeen from the American Enterprise Institute wrote recently in the National Review [that] the US has done next to nothing to assist the democratic opponents of the regime. And as Henry Kissinger pointed out in an op-ed in The Australian on Wednesday, it is far from clear that regime change, if it is to occur at all, will happen fast enough to thwart the Iranian nuclear weapons program from reaching completion.

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Kissinger wrote, "If George W. Bush's first term was dominated by the war against terrorism, the second will be preoccupied with the effort to stem the spread of nuclear weapons." Given the events of the past week, it is unclear what diplomatic options remain open for the president to choose from.

Many opponents of the Bush administration have been eager to accuse the president and his advisers of being responsible for the failure of their diplomatic attempts to deal with the issue. But the truth is, given the fact that anti-Americanism is second only to anti-Zionism as the popular course in the world today for countries seeking to augment their international standing on the cheap, it is unclear what the Americans could have done differently.

Today it would seem that what is really necessary is a diplomatic campaign aimed not at convincing the Iranians and the North Koreans to cease their nuclear programs, but to pave the way both internationally and domestically for military assaults against the countries' nuclear programs. Such a campaign should highlight North Korea's policy of starving its people to death and gassing them in death camps. It should also highlight Iran's abysmal human rights record, the regime's lack of legitimacy and its support for terrorism throughout the world.

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