God help me, I actually watched CSPAN last night. But lo and behold, in the process of surfing channels, I saw David Kay’s head, and it was talking.
Turns out Carnegie Endowment was delivering a talk on WMD proliferation. PDF transcript here: http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/kay0205.pdf
Basically, as if we didn’t already know, this whole Iraq agenda has been an egregious misapplication of effort and priority. Tons of real and political capital is being expended on a mission that does precisely ZERO, zip, bubkis, nada, to reduce the threat of non-state actors (aka “terrorist groups”) acquiring and using Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons available for purchase (or perhaps even theft) by terrorist organizations.
However! The former Soviet Union and Pakistan both have verifiable nuclear weapon stockpiles, and neither state/government/military is particularly noted for its airtight security and integrity. But Pakistan has been coddled as a necessary ally for our misadventures in the Middle East, and the Russian Federation has been virtually ignored (anybody remember them being mentioned in the State of the Union? Me neither. And Russia was supposed to be Condi Rice’s raison d’etre when she became NSA.).
Furthermore, the continuing economic catastrophe that is Russia means they need cold, hard, cash - and nothing makes money more easily than army surplus. For one, it’s already built, no cost to manufacture. For another, it’s too costly to maintain. And finally, it’s too costly to dispose of without foreign (read “U.S./U.N.”) assistance. So why not unload it and make a nice profit to boot?
Just one more straw on the camel’s back that is U.S. foreign policy. Whether we can ascribe malice of intent is questionable. But from an academic standpoint, studying the history, key actors, and issues at play currently in geopolitics, the administration would have difficulty passing an intro-level course.
Can any dopers provide an intellectually rigorous explanation as to why “rogue states” with no research or manufacturing capacity to produce WMD’s (Iraq, Iran, Libya) are actually higher priority security threats compared to existing and known WMD stockpilers (Russia, Pakistan, N Korea)? Keep in mind the relative security of said stockpiles, too. Russian infrastructure and economy is decaying, so they haven’t the resources to secure their weapons even if they had a vested interest in doing so (i.e. still signatory to NPA, member of IAEA, etc.). Pakistan is only nominally supportive of U.S. policies in their region, but could easily turn should the U.S. say the wrong thing about Kashmir. And N Korea is an actively anti-Western regime with no seat at the world political table and little incentive to abide by international standards of behavior.