Learn to stop worrying and love the bomb

Vancouver declared itself a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone since 1983. At the height of the Cold War, it probably seemed like a good idea to keep our nice little port town low on the list of Soviet priority ICBM targets. (Of course, it would have made little difference - the fallout from the churning radioactive ruins of Seattle would have made the Lower Mainland pretty much uninhabitable).

But it was a simpler time back then. North Korea was still decades away from bragging about its lethal props. Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan had only just been convicted in abstentia for stealing Dutch nuclear secrets that would eventually lead to his nation's (and the Islamic world's) first nuclear weapon. And weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Iran's fanatical ayatollas was only a nightmare keeping Western spooks up at night.

Times change.

The current "crisis" of Iran getting its hands on nuclear weapons shouldn't be surprising to anyone who reads the newspaper with their morning coffee. It might have happened a little sooner than the rest of the world would have liked, but the nuclear genie has been out of the bottle for over 60 years. Swimming in oil revenues to fund a crash weapons development program, with an educated population and surrounded by enemies, both real and manufactured, an Iranian bomb was bound to happen.

But will the Mideast unleash a war to end all wars? I doubt it. (For those who would contend that it is easy to say when I live about as far from any likely ground zero as possible, I would answer that nuclear winter would likely hit the Pacific Northwest as badly as anywhere).

Iranian military experts may believe that a first strike with enough warheads would "wipe the Jewish state off the map" before it could respond in kind. But that would also mean the destruction of some of the holiest places in the Islamic world - not to mention a retaliatory strike from stealthy nuclear subs that would turn the Islamic republic into a parking lot (The few sad survivors of the armagheddon would be pretty chagrined to see American engineers in hazmat suits securing the oil fields left off the target list)...

Which brings us back to the reason why Vancouver's declaration of a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone was pretty pointless - because deterrence works. Soviet threats to Westerners at the height of the Cold War - "we will bury you" - could hardly be any any less threatening than current Iranian threats to make an American ally "vanish".

Maybe it is easier to say this a little more confidently from my safe little apartment in Vancouver - but sweating diplomats at the UN might consider the possibility that Iranian bluster and propaganda - as horrendous as it is to our own ears - is all talk.

tags: Nuclear weapons, Vancouver, Iran, nuclear, oil, bomb, propaganda