By Joseph Cirincione
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in September that the Bush administration will leave the proliferation “situation…in far better shape than we found it.”1 If only this were true. Instead, Bush officials leave office like financiers fleeing busted Wall Street banks, with precious assets squandered on risky ventures, once-solid institutions crumbling, surpluses turned into gaping deficits, and a string of problems mismanaged into crises that threaten to bring down a decades-old global regime.
Nearly every proliferation problem President George W. Bush inherited has grown worse with his stewardship. Every member of the “axis of evil” is more dangerous than they were in 2001. Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program before the war and does not now, but the unnecessary war destabilized the region and increased the risks of nuclear terrorism, while Iran and North Korea advanced further on their nuclear programs in the past five years than they had in the previous ten. With Osama bin Laden entrenched in an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan and protected by a new Pakistani Taliban, he is closer to a nuclear bomb than ever before.
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Strategic Collapse: The Failure of the Bush Nuclear Doctrine
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1 comment:
"Anti-missile programs failed to fulfill their promise."
As many would argue, safety through ABM's is a "promise" that cannot inherently BE fulfilled. The goal of disarmament can be as decisively achieved as an Obama Presidency, if the new U.S. administration fosters educational efforts directed towards its Congress and citizenry on appropriate matters of nuclear and international security. If $60 Billion USD must be spent in the future, it should support projects of greater efficacy and dignity.
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