What's being tough worth?
Ezra Klein's got this just right. The notion that a group of hardcore killers, willing and eager to detonate a nuclear device in an American city, would be impressed or scared by the "toughness" of a US president is absurd. Moreover, the idea that any American president would lack the toughness to stand up to a group of hardcore killers, willing and eager to detonate a nuclear device in an American city is absurd.True, but it misses the point in a way that highlights deficiencies in Yglesias' background, which I'm guessing (with all due respect) is short on military history.
"Toughness" on defense is easy. Gun control activist Carl Rowan became famously (if hypocritically) tough when he shot a burglar in his house. And even the most pacifistic nation can fight like a tiger if their home is sacked; pacifistic Norway and Denmark fought with great tenacity and, yes, toughness after their nations were occupied by the Nazis. Note: "after".
Yglesias continues:
The issue is not toughness, it's whether or not you have policies that would be effective in preventing hardcore killers from acquiring a nuclear device. That requires toughness in certain circumstances, but it requires much more than that. Sheer willpower and willingness to shed blood are not the be-all and end-all of effective anti-proliferation policy. They're not even the beginning.Yglesias seems myopic here; blood is not the only measure of toughness, and certainly not the only one that matters in fighting proliferation. And "Policy" delivered without the willingness and "toughness" to enforce it is as worthless as policy that doesn't demand enforcement.
Ronald Reagan had an anti-communist "policy". It required military toughness, of course - the invasion of Grenada sent the Soviets a message about Reagan's resolve - but more importantly, pure resolve; Reagan's famous obstinacy at the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev was both a tipping point in the end of the Cold War, and a move that was almost unanimously opposed by Reagan's own advisers, to say nothing of the American media. And yet Reagan stayed the course, and history has proven him right.
Applied to nuclear proliferation, policy is easy; even John Kerry can declaim "proliferation is bad!". But toughness in this area is measured by the willingness to make that policy stick; the willingness (indeed, zeal) to tell a tyrant "Bullshit", as Kennedy did in setting the blockade of Cuba; it can also mean the ability to give that resolve teeth (as Israel did when they destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981).
Question: who believes that John Kerry will have either the resolve to hound nuclear transgressors back to heel? Or to stand up and call the most dangerous transgressors for what they are? Or to go in and destroy them if needed?
What on earth makes you think so, if you think so?
Posted by Mitch at October 21, 2004 05:20 AM | TrackBack
What I'd like to see, and I haven't from either candidate, is a doctrine of retaliation for nuclear terrorism.
What do we do if a nuclear device is detonated in one of our cities by an NGO rather than a state? Who do we retaliate against?
I think we do need to retaliate against innocent members of the ethnic group that set off the bomb. That's the doctrine of deterrence. I've met many nice Russians who came to this country recently, and it would have been a shame to incinerate them in a nuclear exchange during the Cold War. Nuclear deterrence requires targeting innocent loved ones of those who would detonate first.
Posted by: Rick (Centrist Coalition) at October 21, 2004 09:30 AMYglesias is flat our wrong. Toughness -- perceived toughness -- is everything. The Iranians only release the hostages to lame duck Jimmy Carter because they knew that they would get a better deal with him than with tough talking Reagan. (Renowned negotiator Herb Cohen, whose advice was sought and then ignored by the Carter adminstration, predicted the time of release to the hour.) Reagan's toughness -- and the perception that he meant what he said -- won the cold war.
Bin Laden and others have said that our weak responses to past attacks led to 9/11.
Sharon's toughness has won the intifada.
Europe hates US leaders who mean what they say. It's a mindset they just can't relate to.
Now let's look at results:
Taliban gone, free and fair elections in Afghanistan. (Osama very likely a smudge on the wall of a cave.)
Saddam gone, free and fair elections coming in Iraq.
Pakistan out of the Nukes R Us business.
Libya out of the WMD business.
Syria moving toward Lebanon pull-out.
N. Korea no longer jerking our bilateral chain.
Israel wins intifada, Arafat isolated. (Mostly Sharon's doing but you can bet Kerry would have been whining about the wall and it's supposed 'illegality')
No further attacks on US soil.
Bush has arguably the most foreign policy achievements in a 4 year span (3 really since most started with 9/11) of any president... ever.
Even if this election doesn't acknowledge this, history will.
Posted by: chriss at October 21, 2004 12:22 PMHere's a good reason to trust Kerry with non-proliferation:
He's not so much of an incompetent that he'd let 380 TONS of high explosives used for everything from car bombs to nuclear detonators be stolen. And then hide the truth for over a year, hoping it wouldn't come out before the election.
Nice touch.
I can't freaking believe this.
I just can't believe it.
Posted by: Luke Francl at October 25, 2004 12:03 AM