I realize we’re in the middle of fighting Evil, one medium-sized country at a time, but growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I still have a healthy respect for the nuclear weapons issue. (You know, the one that says we’re glad they haven’t been used in a while and we know the probability of their being used approaches 1 every time another country develops them.)
From what I recall, as late as 1994 a primary concern of our government was making sure nuclear weapons capability wasn’t spreading around. We didn’t do a great job, but hey, it worked somewhat well for fifty years or so.
So what is happening nowadays, in this administration? Lately I’ve seen:
- While we have sponsored a treaty to keep countries from developing highly enriched uranium and plutonium, we are balking at the idea of actual inspections and verification.
- North Korea is developing land- and sea-launched missiles that can reach the United States, and we aren’t talking much about it.
- According to this post, a man who helped buy ballistic missile submarines for North Korea is celebrated at some of the highest levels of our government. (In the interest of clarification, the full claim is that the Japanese trading company that sold the subs is affiliated with the Unification Church.)
Are we so busy nation-building in Iraq after a war to protect us from weapons of mass destruction rumors of weapons of mass destruction that we are ignoring the real WMDs? Have we become so concerned about terrorism that we have forgotten the terrors of total war? (Okay, on that last sentence, I think it would be hard to say our current administration’s foreign policy is really oriented towards terrorism — or anything else sensible — right now.)