Daily Alert Archives

Deal or No Deal?

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - You can negotiate a simple arms control agreement, one with relatively few moving parts, with an adversary you don't trust. We did that with the Kremlin in the Cold War. You can also negotiate a complicated arms control deal with a country that shares your values, like Japan and South Korea. But what is hard to implement is a complex arms control deal with an adversary you don't trust - like Iran or North Korea. Each moving part requires some good will from the other side, and, because there are so many moving parts, the opportunities for cheating are manifold. It requires constant vigilance. Much rides on implementing a fail-proof verification regime. There is a hard core in Tehran for whom nuclear weapons are a deliberate thumb in the eye of the world meant to block the very integration that would open Iran to influences from America and the West - an opening they fear would dilute whatever revolutionary fervor is left in its youths, many of whom are fed up with Iran's isolation.
2015-04-24 00:00:00
Full Article