Global Security Newswire

Critics of the Bush administration’s willingness to use unilateral, pre-emptive force to address international security concerns are pointing to recent developments in the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crises as evidence that multilateral, diplomatic strategies can be effective, the Newhouse News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 17).

Following a visit from three European foreign ministers, Iran this week announced that it would suspend its uranium enrichment activities and would allow international inspectors greater access to its nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, U.S. President George W. Bush this week offered to sign a multilateral security assurance for North Korea, a move that steers the solution to the nuclear crisis there away from bilateral talks (see related GSN stories, today).

“I don’t want to get too enthusiastic about it, but this is surprisingly good news,” said Joseph Cirincione, head the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nonproliferation Project.

“In both the case of Iran and North Korea, it looks like international diplomacy is showing promise rather than the straightforward military option,” he said.

“The pre-emptive war model has failed,” Cirincione added. “The costs have proven to be far higher than anyone thought and the benefits very uncertain,” he said (David Wood, Newhouse News Service, Oct. 22).

Bush yesterday said that he has never abandoned diplomatic solutions as alternatives.

“I’ve been saying all along that not every policy issue needs to be dealt with by force,” he told reporters while flying to a state visit in Australia. “There are ways to achieve common objectives, and this is a common objective,” Bush said of the recent Iranian developments (David Sanger, New York Times, Oct. 23).

Another analyst said the United States was acting more out of necessity than principle.

“We’re already involved in one war and we’re kind of overextended militarily. We have to treat these other cases (Iran and North Korea) differently,” said Harvey Sapolsky, director of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Another expert said it was too early to know which strategies were more successful.

“We’ll see what happens,” said James Steinberg, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. “It is certainly good to see diplomacy tried seriously, but I’d be cautious in proclaiming victory until we see where this all comes out,” he added (Wood, Newhouse News Service).