Nuclear disarmament

Obama would like to have a world free of nuclear weapons, and he and Russian president Medvedev have agreed to restart the nuclear disarmament talks. Although he doesn't expect that ideal goal to be reached in his lifetime, Obama is both an idealist and a pragmatist.

When it comes to Iran and North Korea and their nuclear weapons ambitions, Obama brings a quality to the negotiations that was missing in his predecessor, who could only think in terms of black/white, good guys/evil guys, and who only spoke the language of bluster and aggression.

Obama has the capacity to think strategically about the other side's point of view. There's just a hint that "nuclear politics" may be on the table along with "numbers of warheads" and who's got the biggest one? Negotiations that start and end with "Iran can never be allowed to have nuclear arms capability" will be very different when we consider why Iran (or North Korea) may genuinely feel the need to have the bomb and then seek ways to reduce that need.

Iran is not seeking the bomb because we have it. They feel threatened by Israel and its bombs and by our troops on their borders (and our special operations forces operating inside Iran even now). Suppose the situation were reversed and we didn't have the bomb, but Russia and China and Iran and North Korea did? And if we were treated as a global pariah for trying to make one too?

Is there some law written somewhere in the universe that says it's ok for the U.S. (the only country that has ever used a nuclear weapon against another country) to have them, and for Israel and Pakistan to have them, but not Iran?

I am not for a minute saying I want Iran to have nuclear weapons. I wish no one did. What I am saying is that we have to take a broader view than the assumption that we have the right and they don't. Obama is at least willing to have talks with them without first insisting that they prove that they are not building a bomb.

What if they really aren't and are only, as they say, seeking nuclear energy for peaceful uses? Our intelligence was wrong about Iraq and WMD.

Ralph