Sunday, November 19, 2006

All You Want to Do is Talk, Talk

It's not an original title, but it describes perfectly what happens in the world of diplomacy. It was inspired by this article which says that Russia thinks the world should be "firm but cautious" when dealing with North Korea and Iran.

"The international community is obligated to approach the resolution of the Korean peninsula issue and the issue of the Iranian nuclear program extremely cautiously — firmly but cautiously," Sergey Lavrov said on the sidelines of the summit. "If we force this situation into a corner then the threats of (nuclear) proliferation will significantly increase."

What the heck does that mean? We just continue talking to these thugs until we are sure they have nuclear weapons and then we sign treaties with them? Iran's already said the world needs to get used to the idea of a nuclear Iran. That's how well diplomacy has worked.

The truth is that unless the world community (yes, that includes places like Russia and China) are willing to use force to prevent nuclear proliferation, it will happen. It's happened in a variety of places already for a number of reasons. The most significant (and scary, frankly) reason that these rogue states are determined to have nuclear weapons is that they want to force the U.S. into one-on-one negotiations with them and to lift whatever sanctions it might have placed on them. In other words, it's a bit like taking oneself hostage to negotiate with police. When the U.S. won't negotiate with these people, we are castigated as "cowboys" and "war mongers." Yet we've seen repeatedly how well diplomacy works in these places. For them, diplomacy is another word for "lying."