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Fifthly there is a myth perpetrated by the west that democracies are the only states to be trusted with nuclear weapon. J Boris Johnson the Conservative MP and ex-editor of the Spectator wrote this in 2004 in the Daily Telegraph
It is amazing that Israel remains the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with 200 nukes at its disposal and more plutonium in stock than America, France, Russia and Britain put together. But that is a good thing, as long as Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. And that is why it is so disastrous that the Americans have been so careless as to allow the Pakistani dictatorship also to acquire these weapons, and why India-Pakistan remains the world's most dangerous flashpoint. Iran is making progress, and they want to be friends: why else invite us to lunch? But it is a theo-cracy. Rather than threatening them - which may only encourage them to get nukes as quickly as possible - they should be invited to consider that, as soon as they have a full and functioning democracy, they can have the bomb that goes with it.
The idea that democracies make better decisions due to the open nature of their societies is refuted by Eric Hobsbawm Professor Emeritus at Birkbeck who makes the following statement about decision making in ‘democratic’ states
‘The effort to spread democracy is also dangerous in a more indirect way: it conveys to those who do not enjoy this form of government the illusion that it actually governs those who do. But does it? …. (re) the US and the UK. Decisions were taken among small groups of people in private, not very different from the way they would have been taken in non-democratic countries.’
Lastly there is an assumption in the west that international bodies such as UN Inspectors and the IAEA are honest brokers, that they are independent organisations who have objective attitudes and a neutral manner. However as Scott Ritter the former UN inspector and the BBC programme Panorama have narrated, the UN Inspectorate (UNSCOM) in the 1990’s was infiltrated heavily by western intelligence and was passing information to the CIA and the US administration. Even if we accept that the IAEA is full of sincere people representing a number of countries, there is extensive evidence that their offices, movements and data are extensively compromised through surveillance and other covert means. Indeed the former British International Development Secretary Claire Short shortly after her resignation admitted that British intelligence had been bugging the UN Secretary General’s office. No wonder the Iranians are reluctant to allow further intrusive inspections and view the IAEA as an ammunition gaining body for certain members of the UN Security Council who intoxicated with their own neo-conservative ideology won‘t take no for an answer.
Of course the Iranian regime has itself never ceased to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Its secret deals with the U.S. during Iran Contra in the 1980‘s, its neutrality in the first and second U.S. wars on Iraq, its indifference during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts and its logistical support to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan are all clear of a myopic attitude towards national interests. Having caved in to American policy for 25 years, it is no wonder the hawks in Washington expect the same this time around.
To conclude the GWOT has created an apartheid view of international relations where those things that the west cares for; its corporations, its values and its people are prioritised over those that live in other parts of the world. Getting Iran to disarm may make people feel slightly better in their leafy homes in Ohio, Nice and Islington, but it doesn’t address the insecurity of Iranians or of the tens of millions of people in the region. Nuclear weapons cannot be wished away, what causes destabilisation is not necessarily proliferation but double standards over who can have WMD. Of course in an ideal world no such weapons would exist but they do and so do massive and lethal conventional armies. Even if you could practically prove Iran is nuclear free at a moment in time, how can you practically reverse the technical knowledge that is accumulated in the minds of thousands of scientists and physicists? The debate should not centre on the possession of such weapons but the nature of the countries and their ideologies that hold them. To borrow a phrase it will not be nuclear weapons that destroy countries, but countries that will destroy countries. Security is not a zero sum game; we cannot enhance the security of people in the west by reducing the security of those who live in the east. Countries motivated by hegemony, absolute power and neo-imperialism are as dangerous as those who may seek a divinely inspired Armageddon. Just ask the people of Hiroshima and Saigon.
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