Friday, August 31, 2007
Opinion

The neocons are right

It is less damning these days to be responsible for flatulence at a dinner party...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at a press conference in June warned Western powers it was too late to stop Iran’s nuclear program. CREDIT: BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

By Eric Von Haessler

It is less damning these days to be responsible for flatulence at a dinner party than to cop to agreeing with the neoconservative movement about anything. The geopolitical ideas espoused by Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the president himself have become equated with the twin difficulties of the Iraq war and America’s perceived isolation on the world stage.

Their head-full-of-steam, go-it-alone-if-necessary foreign policy is seen to have been a failure not likely to be repeated anytime soon. Indeed, the criticism of this administration’s tactics and style are valid, but the neocons are right about one thing:
Only the spread of democracy can guarantee any sort of lasting peace in this world.

The by-now clichéd phrase “Democracies don’t go to war with other democracies” is a truism that we ignore at our own peril. Dick Cheney’s comment some months ago
that America is currently involved in an existential fight with its enemies around the world was correct.

It may seem silly to think winning in Iraq or Afghanistan is vital to the very existence of the United States, but on closer examination it becomes obvious that it is. A loss on either of these fronts wouldn’t consign the experiment of the founding fathers to the ash heap of history. It wouldn’t happen this year or next, but the future would be greatly compromised.

The future is something we hear a lot about in an election season. But listen closely and you’ll find that when most candidates speak of the future, they are speaking only of the near future. In reality, the future isn’t about securing the country for the next five or 10 years, but for the next 50 or 100 years. To cast one’s gaze out along that horizon is to see that a few important things must be done now in order to keep that future from becoming a living hell.

The main problem is that the proliferation of nuclear technology and the weapons that technology makes possible are unstoppable. The nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle, and the same lightning-fast technological advances that result in MP3 players that
allow you to hold your entire record collection in the palm of your hand are also manifest in the deadly technology of war.

When you hear politicians talking about supporting this or that nuclear proliferation pact or United Nations initiative, it should be greeted with a frightened chuckle. It’s the same old-world thinking displayed by the head honchos at Apple when they signed an agreement with AT&T to be the sole provider of services for the iPhone. They may have entered into contractually enforceable deals, but they wouldn’t be able to stop one 17-year-old kid who spent the summer determined to make T-Mobile calls on his iPhone.

Nuclear technology is an idea understood by many who simply do not currently have access to the material necessary to manifest it in weaponry. We fool ourselves if we don’t see that the technological leaps that result in home computers more powerful than those that helped land a man on the moon in the 1960s won’t also one day put more potential destruction in the hands of tribal or cultist leaders.

It is right that this administration has decided that America must not let a regime like the one in Iran obtain nuclear weapons. In the near-term, we must continue to try and stuff that nuclear genie back in the bottle, because it’s the only responsible course of action. But how long will that style of management last? Over the next 50 to 100 years, nukes will proliferate to every corner of the planet whether we like it or not. The only chance we have of avoiding a certain holocaust is to help create a world in which
that weaponry and technology rests in the hands of governments elected by their own people to serve the needs of those people. Survival is only possible if a proliferation of democracy runs parallel with the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology.

The truth is that even that may not work. But it’s the only chance we’ve got. SP

More of Eric Von Haessler’s musings can be found at newsjog.blogspot.com.