The Big Loser In The North Korean Crisis.

Iran.

I wrote up my thoughts in more detail (shameless link-whoring alert) over at my site, but I wanted to make that point on a blog that gets, you know, read.

The big lesson today is the most obvious one, a lesson most any reader here could have imparted long before we got here. Namely, that any nation that wants nuclear weapons will eventually get them, and will get them by any means necessary.

Over ten years of focused diplomacy on North Korea yielded the exact situation all that blather was intended to prevent. What, did we not talk hard enough? Were the carrots not tasty enough? Not at all.

Those who believed in diplomacy at any price failed to recognize that North Korea wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons in order to put pressure on the international community, it was pursuing nuclear weapons in order to have nuclear weapons. Whatever appeasements North Korea could elicit before today will pale in comparison to what it can gain now that it has the ultimate means of blackmail at its disposal. Because the United States will never go to war against a nuclear-armed North Korea.

The question today is, given the Dave at Garfield Ridge nuclear corollary ("Any nation that wants nuclear weapons will eventually get them, and will get them by any means necessary"), what to do about Iran?

In my mind, Iran is even more of a clear-cut case than North Korea. After all, at least the Norks entertained the prospect of blackmail. Many were fooled by their own intellectual biases into thinking that all Pyongyang wanted was heating oil, civilian reactors, and friendly hugs, and they'd give up nuclear weapons in return for some international affection. Instead, all that was merely a means of stalling until today.

With regard to Iran, however, they're not even asking for hugs. They just want the Bomb, and will do what it takes to get it, however long it takes.

So, knowing that this brand of nuclear diplomacy can't stop a nation from getting what it wants, what are we going to do about Iran? Are we going to stand idly by just like we did with Kim Jong Il and let the Iranians get the Bomb?

I'm not holding my breath.

Guess I Should Have Made My Point Update: The reason why I call out Iran as the big loser is because I'm personally not as equivocal as this post lets on-- I believe that North Korea's actions make it increasingly likely, and perhaps inevitable, that we will go to war against Iran to stop them from becoming a nuclear state.

After all, how could any nation be any more isolated than North Korea, and they *still* got the Bomb. Compared to North Korea, Iran is more open than a 7-11. In the end, I don't see any nation other than the United States and the United Kingdom advocating anything diplomatically or economically serious against Iran. Thus, we'll eventually find ourselves with one option remaining, the military option. It'll be a bad one, for all the reasons Ace has written about here in the past, but my personal opinion is that events overnight make it increasingly likely to be the "least bad" option.

Unless, of course, we're all happily willing to accept a nuclear Iran.

---
This posting was made on my personal computer.

posted by Dave From Garfield Ridge at 11:13 AM

| Access Comments