Bush's foreign policy was neither "go it alone," nor a failure.

Conventional Wisdom

America's arrogance and "go it alone" diplomacy has only made worsened nuclear risks.

Facts

The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was written in 1968, shortly after France and China became the fourth and fifth nations to develop nuclear capabilities. The world was in a nuclear arms race, and United Nations leaders agreed:

Considering the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the danger of such a war and to take measures to safeguard the security of peoples ...

Believing that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would seriously enhance the danger of nuclear war ...

      The writers believed the spread of nuclear technology would exponentially increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons would eventually find their way into the hands of men who would use them for political advantage or destructive aggression. By signing the treaty, more than 150 countries gave up their right to nuclear weapons in the interest of the greater good, "the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States," and the hope of someday creating the conditions for a halt to the production of these instruments of potential horror.

      The world leaders who advanced this treaty had fought and lived through World War II. They knew the evil that men can do. Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and Stalin were as much a part of their lives as the Bushes and Clintons are a part of our own. They were not naïve; they understood that if powerful weapons were available, they would likely be used. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis kept the risks of a nuclear nightmare fresh in their minds. They understood the destruction that could occur at any time, and that if weapons moved into the hands of those who had nothing to lose, the loss to mankind could be of unimaginable proportions.

      But let's be quick to say that nuclear power is not the problem. Peaceful uses of nuclear energy will no doubt become more important as technology and populations expand in the twenty-first century. The problem is that some maniac with a hot temper and a nuclear trigger could level an American city just to prove his manhood. So far there's no evidence suggesting that the belligerent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the North Korea's Kim Jong-il is any more rational than Adolf Hitler or Hirohito. We know for certain that al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists would love nothing more than to inflict massive devastation on America and leading Western Democracies.

What the Treaty Actually Says

Article I: Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.

Article II: Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.⁶¹

Further, the NPT requires non-nuclear-weapon countries to accept safeguard measures, including unannounced inspections by qualified U.N. personnel, to verify compliance with the terms of the treaty. It is this portion of the NPT that has created the controversy with countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

      Only four countries have not signed the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea. This means that nations like Iran and Iraq have signed and ratified the treaty, even though we now know their commitment was not honored. India and Pakistan both possess and have tested nuclear weapons. Israel, however, has had a policy of "opacity" regarding its own nuclear weapons program, meaning that they have given hints that they have them but have never publicly acknowledged the fact.

       Importantly, of the five nations that posed a developing nuclear threat during George Bush's presidency, three have been eliminated (Iraq, Libya, and Syria), and another (North Korea) appears to be on the verge of being eliminated.⁶² The last known major threat remaining is Iran. The Bush approach to nuclear countries was the opposite of "go it alone." In fact, he was criticized during the 2004 election for not agreeing to unilateral (i.e., "go it alone") talks with North Korea. Here are the facts related to these various nuclear programs.

       North Korea: For more than a decade, the United States and North Korea's neighbors tried various approaches to prevent North Korea from becoming nuclear. The Bush administration argued that a multilateral approach had a better chance, because North Korea would use one-on-one negotiations as a chance to divide our allies--China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia. Early on, North Korea ratified the NPT, then promptly violated it and later withdrew. Eventually, however, on February 13, 2007 they signed an agreement with all six nations to shut down their nuclear program in exchange for $250 million worth of oil. By this point, they needed money more than they needed the weapons. If it is successful, a stalemate lasting almost twenty years will have been broken. Policy makers are cautiously optimistic, but North Korea has broken deals before. The hope is that the six party talks, which brought pressure to bear from all of North Korea's neighbors, including China, would make breaking the deal too costly for the North Korean government.

       Libya: After the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi apparently saw the handwriting on the wall and volunteered to end his nuclear development activities and turn over all technology and equipment to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Officials overseeing the dismantling of Libya's weapons program reported that it was "much further advanced" than U.S. and British intelligence agencies once believed, and included centrifuges and a uranium-enrichment program, all necessary components in making a nuclear bomb.

       Syria: We may not know all the places where nuclear weapons are hidden. After Libya gave up its development program, details were discovered about the network established by the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer, A. Q. Khan, to sell nuclear secrets to Third World tyrants. But the one thing that became perfectly clear was that the science of nuclear technology was out there, and it was for sale. The nation of Syria is a case in point. It appeared to military analysts that Syria's Al Kibar facility was indeed a copy of North Korea's Yongbyon complex, as "the grid of cylinders for control rods and refueling ports" were "arrayed almost identically." ⁶³ With the risks to the entire Middle East posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of a Syrian dictator, it's not surprising that Israel felt their right of peaceful coexistence, and their survival as a nation, demanded the destruction of that facility.⁶⁴

Assessment

       It goes completely unnoticed by most Americans that much progress has been made in recent years on nuclear proliferation, one of the most important issues of our time. Of the five nations that posed a potential nuclear threat when President Bush took office, three (Iraq, Libya, and Syria) have been eliminated and another (North Korea) appears to be on the verge of elimination. Four out of five is not bad, and it was a result, not of "go it alone diplomacy" as we hear so often, but of multilateral pressure and credible strength.

       Nuclear proliferation has been one of the thorniest issues confronting U.S. presidents ever since President Harry Truman ordered the strike that ended World War II. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty has worked because successful nations have a common desire to see proliferation stopped. The current success demonstrates the power of the US when it works closely with the Europeans, China, Russia and Japan to a common purpose.

Conventional Wisdom

Iran's nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes now. After all, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said that Iran had stopped developing nuclear weapons in 2003.

Facts

Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council which produced the NIE Report, told analysts at the Council on Foreign Relations that he stands by the NIE's conclusions. But he quickly added that his office never thought those conclusions would ever become public. "If we thought for a minute they would be released, which we didn't, we would have framed them somewhat differently." Asked how he would have framed them, he said:

Dear Readers ...

   You can't have a bomb unless you have fissile material ... the Iranians continue to develop fissile material. A weapon is not much good if you can't deliver it--they have a missile-development program. But you don't have a bomb unless you can produce a device and weaponize it. That's what's stopped.⁶⁵

Or as The Economist's blogger assessed the NIE Chairman's remarks: "Be afraid, but not too afraid." Ronald Reagan's oft-quoted phrase, "Trust, but verify," would seem to apply as well.

Assessment

More recent analysis suggests that the NIE Report's claims that Iran was out of the nuke business were actually wrong, or at least misleading. CIA Director Michael Hayden said recently that it was "hard for me to explain" the conclusions reached in the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program. So now the conclusion that Iran had stopped work on its weapons program is being downplayed by the same officials who wrote the report.

      In his unscripted response to questions from a member of the audience at the National Press Club, Hayden said, "Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear to be willing to pay for what they're doing now if they did not have, at a minimum ... at a minimum ... if they did not have a desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they have already decided to do that?"

The Survey Says:

  A Rasmussen survey found that 67% of American voters believe that Iran remains a threat to the security of the United States. Only 19% disagree while 14% are not sure. Fifty-nine percent (59%) believe that the United States should continue sanctions against Iran. Twenty percent (20%) disagree and 21% are not sure.

  Meanwhile, 47% believe it is "Very Likely" that Iran will develop nuclear weapons in the future and another 34% believe Iran is "Somewhat Likely" to do so. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of liberal voters believe Iran has stopped its weapons program but 54% disagree. Among conservatives, just 8% believe Iran has stopped, while 81% disagree.⁶⁶

      Most of the news coverage of the NIE Report focused on the first sentence, which said: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." But officials now say the sentence refers only to work on a nuclear warhead. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said the report was so quickly declassified and poorly focused that it confused people.

      "If I had it to do over again," he told a Senate panel, "I would be very specific in how I described what was canceled and what continued." Intelligence experts are now emphasizing that Iran is still working on its enrichment program, which could be used to make weapons and ballistic missiles, which could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead, which could strike Europe and, potentially, the United States. Which means, he thinks we need keep an eye on Iran.⁶⁷

Conventional Wisdom

Why does the United States get to dictate whether or not North Korea or Iran has nuclear weapons, anyway? They're free countries. Isn't that really their decision?

Facts

First of all, neither Syria, nor North Korea, nor Iran could conceivably meet anyone's definition of a "free country"--far from it. The citizens of these countries are virtual prisoners of the state, and suffer under repressive leadership. Secondly, none of the leaders of these countries can be trusted to tell the truth. Under the Framework Agreement negotiated by the Clinton administration, North Korea had agreed to place its store of uranium fuel rods in a secure facility guarded by international weapons-inspectors. In October 2002, North Korean negotiators from Pyongyang began demanding one-on-one talks with Washington. The U.S., however, insisted on multilateral talks involving at least one other nation, such as China, since North Korea's desire to join the nuclear club was primarily a regional problem.

      After the U.S. victory in Iraq, the North Koreans reluctantly agreed that China should participate in multilateral discussions. But it wasn't long until Kim Jung Il abruptly expelled the U.N. weapons inspectors, broke the seals on the locks, and had the fuel rods removed to underground laboratories where North Korean engineers began the process of converting them into weapons-grade plutonium.

      In a lengthy report on the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, Newsweek reporters offered the following assessment:

No one in Washington has ever known quite how to deal with North Korea. As a lonely Stalinist regime, Kim's nation is a political toxic-waste site that has festered for 50 years amid East Asia's glittering successes. It is also a place of truly Orwellian oddity, where traffic cops in Pyongyang's empty boulevards go through the motions of directing cars when there are none, where thousands of people starve unnoticed and where Kim administers "a gulag the size of Houston," in Bush's words. Bill Clinton likewise despised Kim, and as president, Clinton came much closer than Bush ever has to attacking him.⁶⁸

      North Korea is certainly a special case, but the disputes and saber-rattling taking place in that part of the world illustrate why an ongoing program of nuclear deterrence is so important. At any time a given country's leadership can make irrational decisions. The more countries that have nuclear weapons the higher the likelihood of such an event. Ignoring the threats and belligerence of Iran regarding its nuclear ambitions could prove to be a costly mistake. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, denies that the Holocaust ever happened, despises the United States and the West, and supports terrorism and other types of radicalism around the world. Any mention by his own country's citizens of free democratic elections, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press is an open invitation to violent suppression by the totalitarian state's police.

      As one foreign policy insider has observed, "Unlike the Soviet Union, which was at least predictable enough to deter, Iran is simply too radical, unstable, and contemptuous of both international law and basic standards of decency to be allowed into the nuclear club. The world has already seen human rights-abusing regimes with nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and China. It does not need another."⁶⁹

Assessment

The dangers of a nuclear world in which Stalinist tyrants like those in North Korea and Theocrats in Iran can bargain and blackmail the international community into accepting their dictates is not a place where any of us would want to live. The only way to make sure that such a scenario never happens is for those nations that are dedicated to peaceful coexistence to use whatever political, diplomatic, or military muscle they possess to demand compliance with the goals of nuclear non-proliferation. From day one, the United States has offered the strongest and most clear-headed vision of how this can be accomplished.

      A survey in a study published in the 2002 winter edition of the journal International Security reveals that there have been twenty cases of "nuclear reversal"--in which a country currently pursuing nuclear weapons halts or rolls back its nuclear program--over the lifetime of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The article also noted that the U.S. has played a "critical role ... in arresting nuclear proliferation," and concluded that "sustained U.S. encouragement of perceptions [that acquiring nuclear technology has limited utility] ... and a conscious U.S.-led effort to complicate the road to nuclear weapons" are the two most important reasons for the success of these reversals.

An Explosive Situation

      The writer of the journal article then goes on to say that:

The United States has been continuously engaged in innovative, interdepartmental, and multilateral non-proliferation efforts since 9/11. In fact, far from ignoring non-proliferation issues, this administration has actually devoted more resources to counter-proliferation since it came into office, doubling DOE's nuclear non-proliferation budget from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2006 and spearheaded two significant, underreported multilateral initiatives on combating global nuclear terror--U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 and the Proliferation Security Initiative--and have continually reaffirmed its commitment to fulfill its disarmament obligations under the SORT, the 2001 successor to the SALT, START I and START II treaties it signed with Russia during the cold war.⁷⁰

      It has been estimated that there are currently in the neighborhood of 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. At one time there were as many as 65,000 nuclear weapons, but thanks to the NPT accords and America's record of vigilance, that number has been voluntarily reduced. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Robert Samuelson writes that, "It must be counted as a major miracle of the modern age that in the 59 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki none of them has been used in anger." ⁷¹ And we say, let's keep it that way. 

"The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons" (NPT), United Nations. Full text available at http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/npttreaty.html] (accessed May 10, 2008).

    Countries currently engaged in supporting U.S. effort in Iraq include Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican, Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Palau, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Singapore, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tonga, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uzbekistan, and the number is still growing. The list includes nations from every continent. Population of coalition countries totals more than 1.23 billion people, with a combined GDP of approximately $22 trillion and represents every major race, religion, and ethnicity. It should come as no surprise that many of these countries have recently overthrown repressive regimes or have suffered from terrorist activities. These 49 nations understand the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the world and the devastation his regime inflicted on their own people.

    Los Angeles Times staff writers, U.S. offers evidence of North Korea-Syria nuclear plant, April 25, 2008

    David Albright and Paul Brannan, "Syria Update III: New information about Al Kibar reactor site," Institute for Science and International Security, Apr. 24, 2008. [http://www.isis-online.org/publications/syria/SyriaUpdate_24April2008.pdf] (accessed May 5, 2008).

   Editorial: "Translating the Iran NIE," The Economist, Mar. 20, 2008. [http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/iran/] (accessed Apr. 9, 2008).

    Rasmussen Reports: "Just 18% Believe Iran has Stopped Nuclear Weapons Development Program," Dec. 7, 2007. [http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/general_current_events/just_18_believe_iran_has_stopped_nuclear_weapons_development_program] (accessed Apr. 8, 2008).

    Rowan Scarborough, "Intelligence officials downplay Iran report," Washington Times, Apr. 4, 2008. [http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080404/nation/866512695] (accessed Apr. 9, 2008).

    Michael Hirsh, Melinda Liu, and George Wehrfritz, "We Are a Nuclear Power," Newsweek, Oct. 23, 2006. [http://www.newsweek.com/id/44943] (accessed Apr. 10, 2008).

    Kim Holmes, "Iran: Don't Trust an Abuser with Nukes," Heritage WebMemo #824, Aug. 26, 2005. [http://www.heritage.org/Research/Iran/wm824.cfm] (accessed Apr. 10, 2008).

    Levite, Ariel E. "Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited." International Security, vol. 27, no. 3: Winter 2002. 59-88.

    Robert Samuelson, "Nuclear Nightmare," Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2004. A27.