Successive administrations in both parties have spent an
inordinate amount of time focused on Iran and North Korea, largely because of
the nuclear threat. I say “inordinate” because in reality neither of these
nations poses an existential threat to America. Both are really just
relatively weak authoritarian regimes that have learned how to pull America’s
chain, and how to play the American media.
Let’s be clear. Nuclear weapons are worrisome, but in fact
neither of these two nations is about to lob nuclear weapons into the USA or
into any US allies unless we are invading them, and perhaps not even then,
because they know perfectly well our nuclear retaliation would be devastating,
and in both cases the primary focus of the ruling regime is on surviving.
There are currently eight declared nuclear nations (The US,
Britain, China, Russia , France, India, Pakistan, and North Korea). Israel is
an undeclared nuclear nation. And there are probably another dozen or so
nations that could become nuclear nations over a long weekend if they needed
to. The knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons is now widely available, so
there is nothing special about either Iran or North Korea except that we don’t
like them. And by the way, it is
doubtful that either of those two nations have missiles accurate enough to drop
nuclear weapons on specific US targets
like cities or military bases. Missile range is one thing; missile accuracy is
an entirely different, and much more difficult, proposition.
That is not to say that Iran and North Korea don’t present
problems that the US needs to address. But they are hardly an existential
threat to us, nor even close to ever becoming a peer competitor. And indeed
neither are “in our neighborhood”, and so the main burden of dealing with them
ought to fall on their own neighbors. In the Middle East there is already a
coalition, including unlikely partners like Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia,
forming to constrain Iran. In the case of North Korea, Japan and South Korea,
and to some extent China itself, are serving as a counterweight. American
involvement certainly helps, but is hardly essential. Their neighbors already
have enough self-interest involved to motivate them adequately.
But one ought to notice how effective both North Korea and
Iran are at playing to the American media, which is highly prone to hysterical
responses, which in turn seem to force some politicians to feel the need to
respond. I suppose nuclear scares make good news, but they hardly make good
policy.
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