Safer Than You Were Four Years Ago?/ Pakistan Is Not Your Friend Edition

Hey, remember that time (a month ago) when the Bush administration scuttled an international treaty on non-proliferation of fissile nuclear materials under the patently false pretense that to do so would be too expensive? Via Matthew Yglesias, it seems that The Economist [do you trust that Marxist rag?--ed] has done a bit of digging, and has a frighteningly plausible hypothesis about the administration's actual motives for abandoning the treaty:

[T]his week American officials were attempting to persuade 65 sceptical governments at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that much delayed negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, or “fiss-ban” (ending the production of fissile material for military purposes), should proceed without considering any verification rules.

Why? An 18-month review, say officials close to the exercise, showed that it would cost more money to verify such a treaty than anyone is likely to want to pay, and checks would have to be so intrusive they could compromise national security. But arms-control enthusiasts smell a rat.

Daryl Kimball, of the Arms Control Association, argues that a properly focused treaty could be monitored with confidence. He puts the reversal of past American policy by the Bush team down to three less high-minded motives: their aversion to multilateral agreements; the worries of Israel and Pakistan, two allies that want to keep the option of adding to their stockpiles; and opposition from the navy, which doesn't want inspectors snooping around to make sure that nuclear fuel for powering submarines is not diverted to power warheads. [Emphasis mine]

Have you got that committed to memory? As the Economist article further explains, the US stopped producing fissile material for nuclear weapons 14 years ago, so no one could claim with a straight face that there is any tactical advantage to be gained from more or less encouraging aggressive nuke-seeking powers from producing such materials.

Let's further suppose that the administration's official reason for razzing the treaty---cost---is accurate. Don't you just brim with confidence at the notion that it's too expensive to assemble a verification apparatus to keep fissile materials out of the hands of potentially bin-Ladenist nuclear physicists in Pakistan, or the atomic agencies of the Iranian mullahs? How much has the Iraq war cost? Weren't we supposed to stop at nothing to make America more secure?

Now consider Kimball's explanation in the Economist. Is there any possible positive spin on a foreign policy that bows to wishes of Pakistan? This is not, let it be said over and over again, a case of carrot-and-stick diplomacy; on the contrary, this is, dare we say it, appeasement. And it is an appeasement motivated in part by a simple rejection of the very notion of supra-national commitment, even when such commitment is obviously in the interest of all the American people.

[What is this anti-American propaganda? George Bush likes you like he'd like to be liked himself. And didn't you know that John Kerry wasn't in Cambodia precisely when he claimed to have been?--ed.]