Hillary Clinton appeared this weekend on ABC’s This Week and continued the series of warnings about regional arms races stemming from the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
We want to avoid a Middle East arms race which leads to nuclear weapons being in the possession of other countries in the Middle East.
If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia. I don’t think anybody wants to see that.
No, nobody wants to see that.
But the question is this: do these statements, in presupposing a cascading effect, legitimate the logic that would support such an effect? If so, then this would imply an important role for U.S. security guarantees, i.e. “extended deterrence.” However, the problem with threatening Iran with the prospect of facing a “battery of nuclear weapons countries” in the region is that it seems to both highlight the importance of extended deterrence and shoot down its effectiveness simultaneously.
This is obviously all part of diplomatic gamesmanship, and threatening an arms race doesn’t preclude us from privately whispering sweet reassuring nothings to our allies at the same time; but it’s not a bad idea to think about how what we say in order to achieve the short-term objectives of stopping Iran and reversing North Korea could create tension with what might be a broader, long-term goal of undercutting the logic that would support proliferation in general. Regardless of whether it’s the likelihood or the net consequence of a regional proliferation cascade that is presently in-doubt in North Korea and Iran, the fact is that the thought of it has stopped neither of them. If continuing to threaten arms races is nevertheless going to be part of the diplomatic strategy, then let’s hope that doing so doesn’t inadvertently create a push to demonstrate the threat’s credibility down the road.