Don’t Get Bitten By a Radioactive Snake

Now that the cold war is over—the dragon is slain—there are new, smaller yet sinister threats to deal with—poisonous snakes. One of these snakes is nuclear proliferation. During the Cold War, things were both very insecure and very secure at the same time. Things were insecure because at any minute the United States and the USSR might get into a tiff that would turn into a nuclear war and might end the world. So that was bad. At the same time, though, things were pretty clear-cut. There were three sets of nations: ones on the US’s side, ones on the Soviets’ side, and non-aligned ones. As far as the US was concerned, the non-aligned ones were as bad as the ones that sided with the Soviets. The ‘if you’re not with us you’re against us’ mentality among American leaders is not new. Everyone pretty much knew who their enemies were, and there was a very specific agenda behind pretty much every foreign policy decision, and the nuclear weapons were controlled by a very particular community of nations.

Since the collapse of that world order there has been a lot more ambiguity. No nation can simply be classified as either an enemy or a friend based on the Right-ness of their governments. From the collapse of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 there was no real cohesive direction undermining all foreign policy decisions. Trying to further the economic interests of the United States was not the same driving force that the War on Communism had been. Then the War on Terror entered the picture. I would argue that though it has created a collective point for all parts of the government to focus their energy on, the world community is less clean-cut than ever.

It is not clear which nations are enemies and which are friends in the context of the War on Terror. No nation would proudly announce itself to be a state sponsor of terror, and it is a difficult charge to prove. It somewhat clearer when it comes to nuclear proliferation. With the collapse of the Soviet Union there were suddenly former Soviet republics that had nuclear weapons. They are probably less secure than they were during the Cold War period. There are also nations attempting to create weapons programs of their own. At least this is a clearer point: either a nation has nuclear weapons, is attempting to get them, or doesn’t have them. It is a little harder to hide the development of nuclear weapons than clandestine support to a non-state actor. Non-state actors are what makes the new world order especially murky. They are difficult to fight, locate, and almost impossible to control. If one of the nations that has nuclear weapons cannot secure them or is willing to sell them, the world faces the possibility of a non-state actor with a nuclear weapon. I hope that doesn’t happen. I also hope that North Korea doesn’t have or get nukes capable of reaching Seattle, because I’m from there.