The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
On Monday, July 12, President Bush delivered a speech at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This is a facility we use to store (and work with) nuclear material. Odds are that you’ve heard clips of—or at least read parts of—this speech; it’s been widely reported and analyzed in the news.
I want to focus in on one small portion of his speech, though:
I’ve just had a close look at some of the dangerous equipment secured in this place. Eight months ago, the centrifuge parts and processing equipment for uranium were 5,000 miles away in the nation of Libya. They were part of a secret nuclear weapons program. Today, Libya, America and the world are better off because these components are safely in your care.
Looked at by itself, Libya’s disarmament has indeed made us—and the world—a safer place. President Bush successfully employed a carrot-and-stick strategy by agreeing to drop sanctions against Libya in exchange for the end of their weapons programs. By continuing the negotiations that begun under the Clinton administration in 1999, Mr. Bush deserves credit for ensuring the peaceful disarmament of Libya.
However, this needs to be viewed in the wider context of the world at large. Our success in Libya highlights our numerous failures in relation to weapons of mass destruction elsewhere in the world. North Korea has probably already developed a bomb—an outcome which might have been avoided if not for Mr. Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Kim Jong-il. Iran seems to be breaking a deal they made with Britain, Germany and France to end their nuclear programs. Syria is thought by some to have covert uranium enrichment capability, though these reports remain unconfirmed. Saudi Arabia helped to finance the nuclear weapons development in both Libya and Pakistan, and it is not too long a stretch to think that Pakistan might be willing to send a bomb or two back to the Saudis—who don’t allow IAEA inspections in violation of the NPT—for their trouble.
So, that’s one out of several states with nuclear aspirations we’ve convinced to stop. Not a great record, but it’s markedly better than none. Still, the real place where we can improve security is by cutting off the proliferation—stop the people who are spreading the technology and the materials, and you’ve stopped the spread of the bomb. President Bush recognizes this:
Three years ago, a private weapons proliferation network was doing business around the world. This network, operated by the Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, was selling nuclear plans and equipment to the highest bidder, and found willing buyers in places like Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Today, the A.Q. Khan network is out of business. We have ended one of the most dangerous sources of proliferation in the world, and the American people are safer.
Except, wait a second. All we’ve really done is given Khan a slap on the wrist. He confessed to distributing the materials and claimed to have acted alone, in return for a full pardon from the Pakistani government. The rest of his network—because nobody seriously believes that the man acted alone—has not been pursued, and Khan himself is going about his business. David Kay, our former chief weapons inspector/searcher in Iraq, said of this, “I can’t think of any[one] who deserves less to be pardoned than A.Q. Khan….”
And the Pakistan situation isn’t even the end of it. Since the former Soviet Union fell, we’ve been working with the Russian government to secure Soviet nuclear sites; The U.S. pays for security, both in terms of technology and training of guards. But only about 25% of the sites have been secured, the rest mired in Russian red tape. President Bush has ignored this issue persistently, passing up opportunities to bring it up to Vladimir Putin at several summits.
It’s easy to have low expectations for Mr. Bush. After all, the man has failed at nearly everything he’s touched—both his pre-political business ventures and his Presidential boondoggles. This makes one inclined to get excited when he has a high-profile success like the disarmament of Libya. But even in that, all he really managed to do was not screw up a policy his predecessor started. The sad truth is that America is, at best, marginally safer than it was a few years ago.
I agree about the Khan fiasco – it was such a transparent attempt to sweep the whole thing under the rug that it’s amazing that no one (well, no one important) cried foul on it.
— Ernie 1547 days ago #