Probably not. But then, France isn’t populated by brown-skinned people with a weird religion. Amazing what similarities of culture will let you get away with.
and nothing to do with their proposed support for the invasion of Iraq, then?
Non-sequitur.
First, I never mentioned France.
Second, I didn’t say that we couldn’t trust Israel with nukes. I wanted to know about what kind of trust LonesomePolecat was implying with the phrase, “only fuckers in the region we can trust.”
Third, what you linked to invovlves industrial espionage as opposed to state espionage.
jayjay,
I detest and protest what you’re trying to imply.
If you want to accuse me of racism, come out and do it. Don’t be coy.
We can go round and round in The Pit if you like.
So it was “Islamic nations,” not al Qaeda, who were responsible for the attacks?
Out of curiosity, could you please provide a link and quote that supports this claim you’ve made about how Zagadka’s preferences appear?
The claim certainly sounds like a boat load of malarkey- a straw man perhaps.
SimonX, I’m not accusing you or any individual actor in the whole situation of being racist. I’m accusing the institutional foreign policy of the US involving nuclear devices of being so. Israel has nukes? Good for them! France has nukes? No one even blinks. Pakistan and India have nukes? Now we’re worried. A middle eastern Islamic country gets nukes? OH MY OG!!!
Run those numbers yourself…
Stable, secure countries friendly/allied to us are treated differently from basket cases with ongoing border disputes that threaten to start arms races. Similarly hostile countries that go nuclear are not popular.
Do you think that we were upset that China got nukes way back when was because they’re of a different ethnicity, rather than that they were an extremely large ideological foe? Do you think that we do/would discourage Taiwan from developing them because we dislike them or because of fears of what it would do to their and our relations with China?
We (the US) helped France develop nukes. They are NATO members. They are a western industrial democracy, a G7 member. Yes, we have policy disagreements with them but we know they’ve got our backs.
I think we would prefer that Israel not have nukes, if only to avoid proliferation arguments (but Moooommmm, he has nukes, it isn’t fair!). Israel is sufficiently out of favor internationally that there are also relatively few aspiring nuclear powers who would/could work with them (and South Africa decided against it and I don’t know that Turkey ever seriously wanted them).
Back in the 80’s we discouraged Brazil and other South American countries from developing nuclear weapons. It’s not that we just don’t trust Spanish speakers.
Pakistan and India have fought several wars over the last 56 years, and there are ongoing low level hostilities and unsettled issues. Both seem to be heading in (opposite) sectarian directions. We discourage India from getting them because an arms race is inherently destabilizing (and India already had the upper hand). And once they had them there was no stopping Pakistan. Quite frankly, Pakistan is hardly a bastion of stability and there are visible anti-American undercurrents throughout Pakistan. Why should we welcome them to the nuclear club with open arms? (other than to explain that they now play with big boys’ rules).
What if Egypt or Jordan decided to develop nuclear weapons? How do you think the Bush administration would react to that? These are both relatively friendly, relatively stable, predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern countries. What would the neocon reaction be?
Honestly, I don’t know, myself. My guess is they would be extremely uncomfortable, but stumped for a way to stop it. But maybe not. Maybe they would actively try to stop it. Conversely, what would we do if Chile decided to build their own bombs. What would be our reaction? The same? Different? Is there or is there not a double-standard in our nuclear proliferation policies based on whether or not the nations looking to develop nuclear capabilities is Muslim or not?
I suspect there may be. I think the neocons use “terrorism” and “radical Islam” interchangeably. We’re not at war with ETA, we’re not at War with the IRA. We’re at war with Islamist militants. My guess is ANY predominantly Muslim nation, secular or no, might, in the calculus of the neocons, present too much of a risk to allow into the nuclear club. I’m not sure if this is fair or not, but that’s how it looks to me.
Of course we’ll strongly denounce anyone who doesn’t already have nukes for getting them. However, what we’ll do about some nations developing such technology vs. others appears to be different. The standard seems to be the religio-ethnic makeup of the nations in question.
That’s as clear as I can express it, I guess. Am I right, or wrong?
Loopydude: I hope the US will do everything possible to prevent Egypt,or Jordan from obtaining Nuclear weapons because I have little doubt that shortly after obtaining nuclear weapons they will deploy them against Israel forcing Isreal to to deploy their own.
I wish we could put all religious fanatics (christian, jew, muslim, hindu, whatever their particular brand of insanity) on a planet of their own and let their gods sort it out and leave us non insane people who do not claim to hear voices in our heads telling us to kill certain people alone.
Since we cannot do that, I support the policy of non proliferation. Sure it is not fair that we have Nuclear weapons and Osama doesn’t. But shit, we never killed 3000 innocent muslims just to make a pointless point either.
Seems to me that if a country can get away with developing Nuclear weapons then their is not much we can do after the fact. Especially since both FRANCE AND GERMANY AND NOW PAKISTAN, not to mention N. Korea and the former Soviet Union are so willing to sell the technology given to them for free by the US to anyone willing to pay. But if we can prevent them from obtaining the weapons then I think we should. No it is not fair, but nobody promised life would be fair. As much as I despise the American government, I think it is less likely to instigate a nuclear exchange than OBL.
How about the fact that Israel is a democracy and thus we don’t have to worry about them starting a war with us?
An earlier poster claimed that Egypt is a democracy. I don’t think so.
Democracies never go to war against each other
**
Is it true there has never been a war between two democracies? "One arrives at this comforting conclusion chiefly by setting up the rules to exclude all the non-conforming cases.**
Cite for the US giving nuclear technology for free to France? Let alone to Soviet Union…
I don’t think it was “forced”. It was a political choice by Sadate, and he got a lot of flak for it in Egypt (so much flak that he died, actually)
Only a subset of christians believe that members of the two other religions can’t go to heaven. Islam don’t teach that christians and Jews can’t go to heaven, either. So, this argument is moot.
Besides, AFAIK, many jews don’t even believe in a heaven.
They have no desire to convert their neighbors or turn the entire world into an extremist regime (which is the public goal of groups like al qaeda).
Again, name the last time Israelis committed terrorist acts in… Europe? Africa? the U.S.?
No, that’s the current means to defend themselves against an army that sends children with bombs out to massacre civilians.
Luckily, the situation isn’t what it seems you’d prefer: Israel annihilated and the Arab states that hate Western society armed to the teeth with long range nuclear weapons.
[/QUOTE]
I goofed in the quotes in my previous post. Sorry.
Cite?
AFAIK, the US wasn’t happy at all with France develloping nukes. The relations were already strained. The only help received, AFAIK, was unofficial, from a british scientist who hinted his french counterparts about what it was they were doing wrong, with apparently the (secret) agreement of the british governement. And this has only been revealed recently.
From my understanding, France had a low-priority nuclear weapons program going from right after WW2. Following the Suez incident, De Gaulle pumped a lot more resources into it, and Voila! The Force de Frappe’ was born in 1958. No official American support, certainly.
I pretty much figured when I said that I would be called on it. I will search the web a bit but I am guessing I will not find much. The only two citations I could make would be to a 80’s/early 90’s article in Foreign Affairs on the topic. I believe that the assistance was kept fairly low key to avoid notice as much as possible, though not actually classified. It dealt more with commenting on French efforts-effectively helping them avoid blind alleys and what not rather than joint weapons development or the like.
Searching the Foreign Affairs website for “US France Nuclear cooperation” and “US France nuclear development” doen’t seem to yield any terribly promising abstracts. So at the moment, in the words of the immortal Dr. Evil, I can’t back that up. The counterintuitive nature of the story is one of the reasons I recall it.
I am not exactly retracting my statement, but in the absence of backup material and given that I am trying to remember back over 10 years I certainly cannot expect people to believe my statement on this matter… I may attempt to dig this up off line but probably not too soon.
FWIW, my search of the Foreign Affairs database brought up this article http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19890601faessay5960/gerard-c-smith-helena-cobban/a-blind-eye-to-nuclear-proliferation.html , which (in the first 500 words which can be read without purchasing the article) suggests that US attitudes towards a Pakistani bomb were in the past similar to our attitudes towards the Israeli weapons program - effectively permissive if officially negative. I imagine that at the end of the cold war a nuclear Pakistan became far more of a liability than an asset.
Well, we didn’t seem to be too tickled when the Soviets developed nukes, either, and they ain’t brown.
Accusing US nuclear policy of racism is kind of silly. We don’t particularly want anyone else to have nukes, but we object particularly when unstable, dangerous regimes like North Korea and Pakistan/India develop them. Israel is neither unstable, nor dangerous.
Regards,
Shodan
I think you are all confused. Israel has never said that it possesses nuclear weapons. The only person that claimed so was a criminal, as is obvious from the fact that he spent almost two decades in jail. Surely you don’t want us to trust the word of a convicted felon on such an important matter, do you?