<You've made yourself a hostage>
Yes, I am a hostage. Since birth. So are you. If you're not scared, it's because your eyes are closed. Or maybe it's just bravado.
We opened Pandora's box over Hiroshima in 1945, and all the wishful thinking we are capable of, won't stuff the demons back in the box.
The ability of make WMD, in the space of 50 years, has expanded from 1, then 2, superpowers, to wealthy regional powers (France, England), to poor regional powers (India, Pakistan, China), and small besieged countries (Israel, S. Africa, Taiwan). It ought to be obvious where a continuation of that pattern leads. Humans are curious, clever, creative monkeys; stopping the spread of information (especially dangerous information) is impossible.
Everyone knows that Knowledge Is Power, and WMD knowledge gives the possessors immense power. Pakistan's nukes, even without a hint of a threat to use them, gives them a better bargaining position, anytime they negotiate anything with another country. Which makes every other poor nation envious, in a positive-reinforcement cycle. The time-vs.-adoption curve for WMD, is on the classic S-shaped curve, and we are currently on the steep mass-adoption part of the curve. Soon, all too soon, every disgruntled sub-national group will have the means to detonate a grenade on Spaceship Earth. The Basques. The IRA. The Chechens. Hamas. Shining Path. The Apaches. (If you think the Apache tribe has forgotten how much land they used to own, and don't want it back, and aren't deeply angry still, then you haven't talked to any of them.)
I don't know what the solution is. I have ideas, but they are tentative and probably wrong. However, I am certain that the following solutions have no chance of working:
1. Nonproliferation. The world is literally awash in out-of-work nuclear scientists and weapons-grade plutonium. High School students using public info, can come up with plans for nukes, that are so accurate and detailed, they get classified as soon as the FBI finds out. At best, nonproliferation is a temporary solution, delaying the inevitable for a while.
2. Global Hegemony (the U.S. garrisons the planet). This is your solution: take away everyone else's grenade, then watch everyone forever, to make sure they aren't making more. The U.S. decides unilaterally what are the minimum standards of civilized behavior for the other 200 nations on earth, and then do "regime change" and "nation-building" whenever anyone steps over the line. We become a modern Sparta, and all our freedoms are sacrificed on the altar of Security.
Won't work; this is overreach: we are 5% of the world's population, 20% of the global economy, and both those are declining %es. The Brits and Israelis are the only ones who seem willing to help us be Planetary Policeman, but it still isn't enough. Maybe, just maybe, if all the other wealthy MarketDemocracies (EU, Japan, Australia) got on board, it could be done. But they are firmly NotOnBoard. We're going to have a 400B$ deficit this year, and that won't even buy us the ability to take on two small poor nations (Iraq, N. Korea) at the same time. We are overreaching already, and we've only crossed off the first country on the AxisOfEvil list.
3. Isolationism won't work. The Global Village is real. People, ideas, capital, goods, all flow in large amounts all over the planet. Every national (or supranational)attempt at separation/isolation from the emerging global economy/culture, in the last 100 years, has failed: India till the 1980s, China under Mao, the Soviet Bloc, Argentina under Peron, etc. Without exception, all failed. Islamic Fundamentalism is another modern response to this aggressive emerging global culture. It won't work, either, but it has the potential to cause much mischief as the Muslim world gropes towards finding a home in the Global Village.
Try to take my grenade away, and there's going to be a fight, and we are all likely going to get blown up. I suggest, instead, we go together to an Anger Management class. |
