North Korea’s underground nuclear test last week made no negative impact on the New York Stock Exchange.
This fact is most revealing about the free world’s response to another rogue regime acquiring nuclear capability while its population starves.
There is a lot of blame to go around on who did or did not do what was required in preventing nuclear proliferation in East Asia. But the free world’s failure in stopping Kim Jong Il and his Hermit Kingdom will spur the other nuclear wannabe, Iran, to push ahead in acquiring the weapons of Armageddon.
As with the other rogue regime—Pakistan and its Dr. Strangelove, the notorious nuclear black market racketeer A.Q. Khan—once a country acquires nuclear capability, the situation cannot be reversed.
The primary reason rogue regimes seek nuclear capability is to insulate themselves from being removed by their own people, with external support. Moreover, it compels foreign opponents of the regime to acquire a stake in its survival, as is now evident in the case of Pakistan’s military dictator.
A wider historical perspective might be helpful here.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. held the nuclear monopoly. There was a window then, as the English philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out in 1948, to make a pre-emptive strike on “humanitarian grounds” against Moscow’s nuclear ambitions and save the world from nuclear proliferation.
The critical point Russell was making was put into action by the Israelis against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to the benefit of all in the region and beyond.
Both Stalin and Mao, insulated with nuclear weapons, died peacefully without having to answer for their crimes of starving and murdering their people in the millions. It is only due to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister, who ordered his nation’s air force to take out Iraq’s nuclear reactor in June 1981 that we find Saddam in the prisoner’s dock instead of ending his life like his hero, Stalin.
But democracies rarely, if ever, pay heed to the gathering war storms on the horizon until too late. When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the free world took a holiday from facing the new perils gathering momentum.
The years of Bill Clinton in the White House were vacation time for the leader of the free world to indulge his narcissism, while Kim and the terrorist leaders of al-Qaida prepared to assault the world.
The perils of nuclear proliferation and the likelihood of a nuclear war occurring having increased hide the other, more painful reality of human tragedy escalating in places like North Korea and Pakistan. The immediate costs of acquiring nuclear weapons by these societies are borne by their populations in terms of human suffering.
The free world might find itself impotent in stopping Kim or preventing Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela from following the North Korean dictator’s example. But inevitably the free world—given its concerns for the rights and welfare of the weakest segment of our human fraternity despite the patchy record on display—will have to provide assistance for millions negatively affected by the nuclear ambitions of rogue regimes.
It might not be too late to stop Iran by pre-emptive measures yet. This should send a clear message to rogue regimes that finally the free world has lost its patience in trying to reason these matters peacefully with those who are beyond reasoning.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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