EDWARDS GETS IT RIGHT
by Michael Crowley
The New Republic
Candidate: John Edwards
Category: Foreign Policy
Grade: A
After I wrote an item today praising Howard Dean for the section on WMD proliferation in his Monday foreign policy speech, a very smart nonproliferation expert called my attention to another, far less publicized speech given yesterday by John Edwards.
It turns out that while Dean touched on the subject fairly briefly, Edwards devoted almost his entire speech to ways of protecting America from a terrorist nuke, anthrax spray, or nerve gas bomb. And having looked over his plan, I'd say it's even more impressive than Dean's (leading me to retroactively bump Dean's grade down a notch, from "A" to "B"). Let us count the ways.
Like Dean, Edwards would dramatically boost funding for the shortchanged Nunn-Lugar program, which secures and dismantles nukes in the former Soviet Union (and, hopefully soon, elsewhere: Edwards wisely suggested yesterday that the program might be expanded to help increase nuclear security in a nation like Pakistan). But Edwards went father, also calling for new international standards to govern the storage and handling of nuclear materials, standards backed up by the threat of surprise inspections and economic sanctions. Edwards also said he'd be sure to hire more intelligence analysts with WMD specialties.
Perhaps most impressively, Edwards promised to appoint what you might call a "nonproliferation czar"--a senior official to oversee the government's many diffuse anti-WMD programs, and one who reports directly to the president. (From my own reporting on counterproliferation I know that many of the best experts in the field have long pleaded with the Bush administration to create such a post.)
Dean did outdo Edwards in one category: he specifically called for a whopping increase in the global fund to secure WMD proposed by the G-8 nations last year, from $20 billion to $60 billion over the next decade; Edwards emphasized the importance of making sure that money pledged to the fund is actually delivered, but didn't talk dollar figures. No matter. To judge by the throroughness of his speech and accompanying plan, there's no question that Edwards "gets" this issue as well as anyone.
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