davidbau.com

Nuclear Equations

All parties continue to maneuver in the Iran situation. The West can't seem to make a move because it's not only fearful of nuclear prolifieration: it is also fearful of strengthening extremists in Iran....

Today's Political Equations

• Sanctions would strengthen extremists.
• Precision bombing would strengthen extremists.
• Killing Ahmadinejad would strengthen extremists.
• Sneaky interference in Iranian politics would strengthen extremists.
• A full-scale invasion would probably be a disaster.

However, the underlying issue seems to be the Iranian people themselves. Why is the idea of Iranian nuclear weapons so popular in Iran? Most Iranians seem to be pretty supportive, even enthusiastic, about the idea of joining the nuclear club.

Ahmadinejad wouldn't be playing the nuclear card if it wasn't popular.

The Nuclear Club Has Different Equations

The nuclear club is a dreadful club, and I have no idea why this isn't clear to every person on the planet. So here is my naive proposal for the Iranian situation.

1. We should make it very obvious that every nation that has nuclear weapons lives under a hair-trigger threat of thermonuclear destruction. Nuclear weapons are a gun that you hold to your own head. This suicide device is what North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel have bought for themselves by joining the nuclear club; it is one of the macabre conditions of living in the U.S. or Russia or China. And this is the gift that Iran is working so hard to purchase for itself.
2. We should should remake "The Day After" in Farsi and Korean, and distribute it widely. Perhaps the physical reality of nuclear war will give the Iranian people just enough pause to step back and realize that the nuclear arms race is not just another soccer game. Not only are there no winners; there is nobody left to cheer when the game is over, and no home to return to.

A Nuclear Education

I grew up in the 1980s having nightmares of nuclear war. That decade was the peak of the escalation of the cold war, and it was a pessimistic, horrible time. Children today might worry about the future of social welfare programs; in that decade our endangered future was represented by the ticking of the nuclear doomsday clock. Time magazine's foreign policy coverage counted the hundreds of thousands of nuclear warheads being amassed and how many times over we could sterilize the surface of the Earth. Any sound of an explosion in the middle of the night still wakes me up to the thought, "has the end of human history come tonight?"

In that decade, the fear of nuclear holocaust dominated popular culture: the nuclear game that had previously been played in the shadowy hallways of power came to Hollywood as full color productions. The 1980s nuclear movies started with The Atomic Cafe and Testament, and escalated into War Games; The Day After; and The Terminator. Nuclear films were the top American media events of 1983 and 1984.

It was a nuclear education that took a long time to come about. Gritty nuclear awareness (a mainstay of Japanese culture since Hiroshima) came to the USA in movies 40 years after we invented the nuclear bomb. Even though the insanity of nuclear war had long been a popular topic of intellectual debate since the 60s, it took until the 1980s for the people of the USA to emotionally internalize the reality and fear of nuclear war.

After World War II, America marvelled at its own superiority. Drunk from the victory of our "forces of freedom," the nation stumbled around the world on international adventures unmindful of the apocalyptic reality of the suicide bomb strapped to our chest. It was only after we had been humbled by military failure in Vietnam and loss of economic leadership to Japan, after we had been sensitized to nuclear fallout by the near-miss disaster of Three Mile Island, that we truly, as a culture, learned that most things in the world are not under our control. It was in this atmosphere of helplessness we learned to regret ever having invented the nuclear bomb in the first place.

The human species could come to an end so easily. And for no good reason. But once the suicide belt is strapped on, it can't come off.

Is there any way to accelerate Iran's nuclear education?

Faith In Our Leaders?

The question facing Iran today is not one of whether they would like to achieve nuclear weapons. The real question is this: do we trust the world's leaders with the existence of human race? Do we trust George W. Bush? How about Ehud Olmert? Would we trust Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

If the choice came between losing political power and evaporating hundreds of millions of people, would these leaders put down the nuclear button and peacefully step aside? Or would they make the political calculation of sacrificing whole human populations instead?

Once a nation has nuclear weapons, the political corruption we would typically dismiss as "the stupidity of our leaders" becomes a constant nightmare. Nuclear weapons place the delicate flower that is the existence of humanity into our leaders' clumsy hands.

Starkly, the nuclear equation is this: if one nation explodes the first nuclear weapon - perhaps by accident, perhaps the reaction to some provocation, perhaps even a loner's misguided attempt to gain favor or notoriety - the second nuclear weapon will be used to flatten the first nuclear nation. Total annhilation is not a matter of abstract theory: it is a simple physical reality of a 10-million-degree fireball. To the extent that there is any doubt that exploding a nuclear weapon might seem acceptable, that doubt must be erased by the grim rules of the nuclear club. There is no room for thought, negotiation, or pause in the nuclear equation. Mutually assured destruction is the solemn oath of club membership.

And we, the people, have nowhere to run. It does not matter for whom we voted for or to whom we pray. After a nuclear war, the planet will be transformed. The entire world around us, every proud building and every green field we see, will be replaced by radioactive dust and barren, molten glass.

That might be fine if you trust our leaders never to explode the first weapon.

Do you?

In the nuclear game, the proper diplomatic message is simple: tell the horrible truth.

Posted by David at February 14, 2006 06:37 AM