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September 14, 2004

The Next Big Problems

Let's talk about issues. Clearly one of the major issues that will continue to haunt the next occupant of the Oval Office will be Iraq, but since pinning down John Kerry on Iraq seems to be the political equivalent of trying to get a cloud in a full nelson, we'll skip that one. How about the other two members of President Bush's Axis of Evil, North Korea and Iran.

When President Bush put those three nations together during his 2002 State of the Union address, the elites scoffed. They have nothing to do with one another, after all. Iran and Iraq are less than two decades removed from a brutal eight year war against one another. Lumping them together was the result of an addled brain.

Yet here in 2004 we know that North Korea bailed out of the Agreed Framework and continued their atomic weapons program throughout the Clinton administration up until the present day. We don't know for certain if they actually have any working bombs yet, but the odds are good enough that we don't want to find out the hard way. Meanwhile, Iran appears to be behind North Korea in the press for nukes, but not too far back. Once they can put together enough weapons-grade uranium, they're going to join the club as well, if nobody stops them. Suddenly that whole Axis of Evil thing doesn't seem so silly.

So we have two foreign policy crises that will crest during the next four years. How each of the candidates will handle the problems should be pretty important questions, I'll submit. Let me begin by noting that I have absolutely no idea how to resolve these issues. In North Korea, it seems that the best alternative may be to keep talking until the regime collapses, but that's taking a big gamble that North Korea won't lash out in a desperate attempt to hold onto power. In Iran, I am firmly convinced that Israel will not allow an Iranian nuclear program to come on line, even if that means a first strike against all known and suspected Iranian sites. That would be an extremely bad result, particularly as Israel might well utilize their own nukes to ensure the destruction of Iran's program. That would throw the whole region into chaos, and I don't know that anyone can foresee clearly what would come out of that kind of mess. But I do think that it's pretty clear it's in everyone's best interests that we find a better way to keep Iran from getting the bomb.

We've already seen that President Bush is going to try and keep pressure on North Korea while trying to make progress through multilateral talks between all the regional powers. In Iran, the Bush administration turned the job over to Europe, which has provided some amusing moments to people who dislike Europe, but no real progress in preventing Iran from continuing to develop nuclear programs. The Bush administration is on record as stating that Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but the only way I'm aware to make sure of that is by destroying their programs, a rather high-risk operation under any circumstances, made more so by our committments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Kerry, conversely, wants to be a Neville Chamberlain for the 21st century. The problem in North Korea can only be fixed by a new Agreed Framework, apparently because we didn't cave in enough on the last one. In Iran, meanwhile, he wants to give them nuclear fuel, as long as they promise not to use it to make bombs. In other words, much like Kerry's promises to internationalize the Iraq effort, Kerry is refusing to deal with the world the way it really is. France and Germany have already said that, while they'd love to see a President Kerry, they wouldn't help him any more than they have President Bush. Iran has already declared that the Kerry plan is unacceptable. And the North Koreans have admitted that they broke the terms of the Agreed Framework almost immediately after it went into effect. Despite these facts, Kerry stubbornly insists that he'll be able to make it all work.

We have two problems that the next president isalmost certainly going to have to deal with in Iran and North Korea. John Kerry says he wants to do what has already failed. George Bush is trying something different. I have no idea if what President Bush is trying will work. But we already know that what Kerry wants to do will fail. The choice seems pretty clear.