<<<when I look back at the Bush administration's efforts to get the UN and the Security Council to agree to enforce their own resolutions, and the support and military assistance from Britain, Australia, Poland, South Korea, et al in Iraq, "instant gratification" and "unilateralism" are not the terms that spring to mind.>>>
It is often said "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". In this case, you had to ask three questions:
1) Could the UN Security Council ever agree to enforce their own resolutions? and if yes
2) How long would it take to get that agreement?
3) What would be the cost benefit of rushing to war without UN Security Council support?
I think clearly the answer to question #1 would be if we let the inspection process proceed and if they found proof of WMD, we were going to get UNSC support. They could have dragged out the process for another 3 to 6 months at the most.
As for question #3, it is clearly very expensive to go to war without UNSC support both in tangible and intangible costs.
<<<why do you say, "Everyone can agree to want to stop proliferation" ? Everyone doesn't. Certainly not Iran. Iran wants nukes to demolish Israel - they said so. Why should they give them up voluntarily?>>>
It's like "Thou shalt not kill". Almost everyone (universally on this planet) agree to it, but not everyone will abide by it.
Eventually it will happen. People will stop killing people. It will take time.
Same thing will happen with nuclear weapons. Those who have it, will not give it up. But, we can stop those who don't have them from developing their own capabilities.
Everyone that counts will agree to that as a fist step.
The need for instant gratification (we can disagree on definition of instant) is not a good trait. It does more harm than good. |
