Sunday, April 16, 2006

An Ugly Road to Mideast Peace?

It looks like Iran is going to end up with a nuclear arsenal. Certainly, if they wanted one, within the next three years is the time to do it. My guess is that, if this were likely to happen, Israel would start advertising its nuclear arsenal as a fait accompli as well--then proceed to build up the kind of ridiculously large stockpile of weapons that these things seem to accompany.

The odd side effect of this is that it might be the only thing that succeeds at stabilizing the area. We don't have much of a track record from which to collect evidence in this regard, but the emerging situation between India and Pakistan at least indicates that the Cold War wasn't an anomaly, and was instead a natural result of nuclear stand-offs.

These two texts, Fearful Symmetry and The Spread of Nuclear Weapons argue toward that, but, man, I wouldn't want to live downwind of these places.

No comments: