Sensible words about Iran and the bomb
Steven Walt looks at history and what has happened when other countries went nuclear. He steps through several situations:
- Did the world turn on its
axis when the mighty Soviet Union tested its first bomb in 1949?
- Did British and French
acquisition of nuclear weapons slow their decline as great powers?
- Did China's detonation of
a bomb in 1964 suddenly make them a superpower?
- Does Israel's nuclear arsenal allow it to coerce
its neighbors or impose its will on Hezbollah or the Palestinians?
- India's "peaceful nuclear
explosion" in 1974 didn't turn it into a global superpower, and its only real
effect was to spur Pakistan -- which was already an avowed rival -- to get one too.
- North Korea is as
annoying and weird as it has always been, but getting nuclear weapons didn't
transform it from an economic basket case into a mighty regional power and
didn't make it more inclined to misbehave.
He concludes
At bottom, the whole debate
on Iran rests on the assumption that Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon
would be an event of shattering geopolitical significance: On a par with Hitler's
rise to power in Germany in 1933, the fall of France in 1940, the Sino-Soviet
split, or the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
Proliferation has not
transformed weak states into influential global actors, has not given
nuclear-armed states the ability to blackmail their neighbors or force them to
kowtow, and it has not triggered far-reaching regional arms races. In short, fears that an Iranian bomb would
transform regional or global politics have been greatly exaggerated; one might
even say that they are just a lot of hooey.
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