Ask Auntie Pinko
February 13, 2003

Dear Auntie Pinko,

North Korea's recent attention-grabbing actions in defiance of the IAEA and UN plan underscore just how far states will go in pursuit of nuclear weapons. In fact, it seems that cash and expertise are becoming less important factors in the development of nukes, while the sheer will to be a nuclear power is now the critical issue. We can look for more nations, fueled by a desire to protect themselves from what they perceive as imperialism, to scramble towards a chance to beat their chest with a nuclear blast. This gets easier every year, due to the scattering of knowledgeable scientists and the material needed to make bombs.

Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. should have invaded Russia to prevent it from getting the bomb. Bush is about to attack Iraq over claims that Hussein tried to get nuclear and other weapons. Apparently, the administration's plan to deal with nuclear proliferation is to destroy everyone unauthorized who tries to get nukes. This seems untenable and dangerous to me - even if Iraq and North Korea drop their nuclear aspirations one way or another, what does Bush plan to do about Iran or any other antipathetic country with a strong drive for power? Attacking everyone won't work. Auntie, what do you think is the answer to the threat of proliferation?

Jesse
Berkeley, CA

Dear Jesse,

Auntie Pinko mostly agrees with how you frame the issue. And it is important that these opinions are included in the debate about how to deal with the issue of proliferation. The threat of imperialist adventuring, real or perceived, can be used to provide a veneer of legitimacy for nations seeking to obtain or develop nuclear weapons.

And a national policy which appears to say nothing more than "we will bomb the living daylights out of anyone trying to get nukes without our approval," is counter-productive, to say the least.

But it is also important, Jesse, that we resist the temptation to over-simplify our analysis of the issue. Any solutions, or steps toward solutions, that we offer, must be free of the simplistic binary good/bad, black/white thinking patterns that have contributed so heavily to the problem.

It's important that we keep the discussion on track, in other words. For instance, Ms Rice may very well be correct - an invasion of Russia, on the heels of World War II, would almost certainly have prevented them from developing atomic weapons and their descendants. But what of it? It was a situation that has no analogs in contemporary world affairs. The barn door is wide open, the inhabitants have scattered, and the barn itself is already in flames.

You bring up some key points, Jesse. The availability of knowledge and materials has passed the point where the efforts of one, or even a small group of nations, to control access to them, can be effective. The critical determining variable is no longer resources and infrastructure, but will.

Nothing would be easier, or more dangerous, than for America to set ourselves up as the world's nuclear enforcement cop. It would be a global version of the "War on Drugs," with the risks elevated to an intolerable level. Yet, at the same time, America cannot abrogate an international leadership role. To whom much is given, of them much is expected. America has been given (or taken,) an overwhelmingly large proportion of the world's tangible and intangible resources. Neither isolationism nor rampant interventionism is a viable option for us.

This is terribly frustrating for us as a nation, because we are most comfortable with binary thinking, short time horizons, and controlling (as opposed to influencing or responding.) Nevertheless, to address nuclear proliferation, we must begin at home, with changing our expectations and attitudes. We must acknowledge that we live in a new, more dangerous world, a world that we can't "fix" to conform to our ideas of how things should be.

Auntie Pinko suggests an approach based on two strategies: The first strategy is internal, focused on education, research, and preparation. We must unflinchingly educate our population to understand the dangers, neither fearmongering nor minimizing, and what we individually and collectively can do to reduce those dangers. We must research both how to prevent and protect ourselves from nuclear tragedies, and how to remedy and recover from such tragedies. And we must prepare for those tragedies, both by doing everything constitutionally allowable to reduce the risk, and by putting an effective response system in place.

The second strategy is an external strategy, and it focuses on primary prevention, containment, and deterrence. Primary prevention, in public health terms, is the reduction or elimination of the conditions that enable accidents, diseases, etc., to happen. A good example is the implementation of public water and waste management systems. A global analog in the context of nuclear proliferation would be building strong economies and fostering political self-determination among the peoples who live in the world's hot spots.

Containment and deterrence can only be truly effective when they are genuinely cooperative efforts. And right now, America has very little trust and credibility to foster genuine cooperation. The first step would be mending fences, the second step would be the creation of a partnership solely focused on the goals of containment and deterrence. Of course such goals can't be divorced from nations' larger economic and political agendas-and their participation in such a partnership will always be colored by those agendas.

And eventually, as with the League of Nations and the U.N., this partnership, too, will decay and fall apart in the face of human cussedness. But that is no reason not to do it. We will always have to reinvent our tools for international cooperation on a regular basis. Geopolitical conditions evolve, human ingenuity to circumvent restrictions is endless, and the poor, frustrated, dispossessed, and grievance-ridden we shall always have with us. But well-designed tools, while they last, can accomplish a great deal.

If it is carefully focused on goals that everyone really wants to achieve, a partnership for containment and deterrence could be such a tool. Participants would have to resist the temptation to infuse broader political agendas into the process. America would have to tread gently and shed the "bully" label; other nations would have to acknowledge the pragmatic reality that America's resources will probably always give it a somewhat disproportionate share of influence.

Neither the internal nor the external strategies, which should be united into a broad, powerful national policy, will serve as a magic bullet on Iraq, North Korea, or other immediate issues. But they can provide us with a way to re-frame our current policy options and re-gather much of the trust and support we have lost in the international arena. That may open up more options for us both domestically and internationally. I think it's worth a try, don't you, Jesse?

Thanks for asking Auntie Pinko!

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