Re: North Korea says conducted nuclear test

North Korea says conducted nuclear test ... North Korea was one of the Axis of Evil countries which GW ominously warned us about a few years ago. It wasn't really clear why he wanted to label them as "evil", but he did. Iraq of course was another of them, as was Iran.

The phrase "axis of evil" drags the mind back to The Axis, which was the arrangement between Germany, Italy and Japan that led to World War II. The phrase implies cooperation between one group of countries to stand against another group of countries. But, really, how could we believe that Iran and Iraq could agree to stand together. After that long war fought between Iran and Iraq, how could they ever stand together? There is that principle, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" but I believe the divisions between the old Iraq regime, and the Iran regime, were too deep for even that principle to bring them together.

In any case, the danger Iran and Korea present are nuclear weapons developed outside the legal framework of the International Atomic Energy Commission. In other words, Nuclear Proliferation. The danger of nuclear proliferation is that if everybody has nukes, then eventually someone will again use them in warfare. And of course nuclear weapons are so vehemently dangerous that they should never be used in warfare.

Right, Mr. President?

Oh, wait, our dear President GW Bush wants to use nuclear weapons. I forgot.

In any case, back to North Korea. This story has been growing for quite some time, North Korea and its nuclear program. There have been on and off negotiations etc. And at the same time Iran has been moving towards nuclear weapons, while protesting their nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

But where has most of the U.S. resources been spent? Iraq. Iraq had no nuclear program, had no biological weapons program, etc. Yet the danger of a mushroom cloud coming at us from Iraq propelled the U.S. into a boondoggle of a war, that's costing hundreds of billions per year, costing tens of thousands of lives, creating great anger around the world toward the U.S. etc.

And all the while North Korea and Iran have been developing their nuclear programs, outside the inspection system, outside the world legal system, etc. And because the U.S. is consumed with the war in Iraq we haven't had the freedom to take any actions against North Korea or Iran.

And it's worth considering what "take actions against" means.

Of what worth is Sovereingty? Being a sovereign nation means defending the country against all intrusions from outsiders, and that the nation makes its own decisions over its destiny.

So if a nation wishes to develop nuclear weapons, the assumption in nuclear proliferation theory is that the world cannot allow nuclear proliferation. The world cannot allow this because it's dangerous. The genie is out of the bottle with some countries, with nuclear weapons having already proliferated to a few countries during the 1950's. Any step by any country not already possessing nuclear weapons is of great concern. The weapons are so dangerous that, as I said before, the more widely available they are, the more possibility is they might be used again.

Hence the world powers have decided that no countries should "be allowed" to develop nuclear weapons unless they also submit to outside monitoring.

But what is this "be allowed" crap when we're talking about sovereign nations? As sovereign nations shouldn't Iran and North Korea and Iraq have been free to do whatever they want? If one set of countries want their own sovereignty to be respected, shouldn't they respect the sovereignty of other countries?

In order to take action against North Korea or Iran the world powers must be ready to do as the U.S. has done against Iraq. Right? If they're going to run nuclear processing plants, then the world powers must be ready to invade those countries and destroy the plants. Right?

In other words, stopping nuclear proliferation requires violating the sovereignty of free nations.

Just so long as we understand what's at stake.