HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023501.jpg

15 support for those who have actually helped to keep the peace and have the potential to go on doing so. The opprobrium attached to ignoring or dismissing the goal of global zero has no influence on the Irans and North Koreas, but it does have an influence on us. It makes it easy, for example, for reflexively anti-nuclear voices in the Congress and the Obama administration (some have migrated from the former to the latter) to oppose even modest updating of our nuclear weapons and to make technical improvements taboo. Thoughtful proponents of global zero should admit that this is dangerous nonsense. They should, at a minimum, campaign with equal vigor for the modernization of our existing, shrinking nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, fixing on zero as the urgent issue before us obscures the real challenge: keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of countries or organizations that might use them offensively. Seen from this viewpoint, the two most decisive acts against the proliferation of nuclear weapons were the Israeli attacks on Iraq’s weapons program in 1981 and Syria’s in 2008. The 1981 attack was widely, if hypocritically, condemned. The destruction of the Syrian facility was downplayed on all sides; and while the US had opposed it, it had the good sense to keep quiet after the fact. There is much that we can do to slow the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Tougher sanctions against the Iranian regime, especially if they produced nationwide shortages of fuel for automobiles and made it more difficult to obtain outside technology, money, and expertise, would be a good place to start. How about sanctions to be applied to any individual who assists nuclear proliferators? Or serious sanctions against companies—and their executives—who provide material support? The more effective they became, the louder the message to others who might be tempted to seek weapons of their own. Why did the “international community,” which passes endless motions against HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023501