Another Blown Foreign Policy Decision

by Steve

This is how you blunder your way into gross nuclear proliferation. You take sides in an area that was showing signs of calming recently, by openly supporting India, bankrolling their acceleration into the nuclear club. You then stiff the other jilted partner, who has been supposedly your most trusted partner in the war on terror, but who has allowed his renegade father of nuclear black market activities to spread weapons know-how everywhere. This partner, who has supposedly been helping you with Bin Laden and holding off the fanatics in his own country, may now question his commitment to our cause, especially when he will now get offers from Russia and China to help him go nuclear just as fast as India. On top of that, our other jilted partner sees that Iran is sitting on piles of cash, but is still 5-10 years away from going nuclear itself, and any reluctance he felt to help them out any further evaporated at the moment Bush embarrassed him in front of his countrymen. And catching Bin Laden?

Yeah, right.

So this is where we find ourselves after this latest example of Bush/Rice diplomacy: India taking our jobs and getting bankrolled to go nuclear as a counter to China. And now Pakistan will likely link up with Russia and China to do the same. And Iran will be helped out now by all three, no matter what, because the moral case to stop Iran from going nuclear just went down the toilet in one trip. And despite signs that India and Pakistan were overcoming years of acrimony to ratchet down the risk of open warfare between the two, Bush just undid all of that and made it worse, knowing the pressure that Musharraf will now be under to keep up.