2015-06-16 – I read an interesting article yesterday in Tablet Magazine called “Why Is Obama Abandoning 70 Years of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy?” Now I am not a fan of Iran, but I have a problem with folks who are sure that bombing Iran will advance the cause of peace. It will not. Bomb them and they’ll get nukes. Sign a deal with them and they’ll get nukes. There doesn’t seem to be a clear path to a happy outcome.

This article criticizes the deal expected this month between Iran and the six world powers known as P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, UK, and US—plus Germany). It says that the Iranian deal, if completed, would be a departure from consistent US policy to stonewall any nuclear enrichment effort, whether friend or foe, since the United State was the sole nuclear power during World War II.

As if that policy has been a success.

But it hasn’t. US policy has failed to prevent the following nations from attaining nuclear weapons: Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and South Africa (since renounced). So why is this policy seen as a good approach to nonproliferation?

Because belligerent policies are assumed to be successful.

It doesn’t matter how much counter evidence is produced. Advocates of belligerent policies always assumes they will be—and have been—successful.

Let’s consider a few:

The United States is now in the process of dismantling a half-century of belligerence toward Cuba. Now, I am making no judgment about the appropriateness of the belligerence when it first began. But at some point it became pretty clear that nothing was being accomplished.

North and South Korea have been maintaining their state of belligerence for even longer. Israel and Palestine even longer than that. Again nothing.

I could go on.

The point is that the world’s politicians seem bound and determined to continue failed policies indefinitely. Rarely is the courage found to try something different.

I honestly don’t know whether the expected Iranian nuclear deal will be better than the status quo or not. I guess that’s why so many people are ready to stick with the status quo.