Iraq proved nothing, because Bush was (as Bushs always are) too ready to placate the international community (Europeans and his friends the Saudis), so fought with one arm tied behind our backs. If we had fought all-out, and not foolishly tried to set up a democracy, we would have shown that hegemony works if you are willing to be truly hegemonic in pursuing it.
Fortunately, Chuck Schumer has better judgement than either Kerry or Obama.

For an international regime to be effective it needs to be objective. You can’t hold up the NPT and expect it to be adhered to if it only exists to handicap and thus make militarily vulnerable states the West views as ‘rogue.’ This is not a moral point – the approach just doesn’t work long-term. The only way it does is to enforce the regime through coercion, like apartheid in South Africa, and when the capacity to enforce it by coercion disappears so too does any hope of non-proliferation. I think the crux of our disagreement boils down to whether or not the US and the West can continue to dictate the terms of international society over the next 10, 20, 30 years. Bush is important for one reason: his foreign policy showed the limits of the hegemonic ‘stick.’ It would have been better off left as an implied threat, because now the cats out of the bag and the world knows its too expensive, risky, and messiancally naive to stand as a serious option in the future. That is, unless the United States wants to further bankrupt itself.

It’s not hypocrisy to be selective, as long as the criteria is the same for every country. Do you want to sponsor worldwide terrorism, or threaten peaceful, productive nations? If so, then you are going to be on the naughty list – your choice.
As far as Bush is concerned, the USA was hardly alone in attacking Iraq in 2003. Even Bill Clinton believed that Iraq had WMDs and was dangerous. But, Bush made his mistakes and is no longer president. The focus now ought to be on the future.
There would be nothing wrong with negotiating an end to Iran’s programs, if this treaty actually accomplished this and had no sunset clause. But that’s not the case.

At no point do I imagine Iran as a nuclear power. The whole debate here is trying to avoid such a thing coming to pass, which translates into the wider question of which non-proliferation approach is best over the long-term (again, the technology is not going anywhere). In this you either need to have air-tight regimes and institutions that are viewed as legitimate by the international community (which means they are not selectively applied, thus the ‘inherent hypocrisy’), or enough hard power to strike transgressors in perpetuity. Already the latter is difficult in the case of Iran, as there was much debate over whether bunker busters would be enough for Natanz, and we still don’t know. Fast-forward 10, 15 years into the future and these tactical difficulties can be expected to compound and multiply.

I don’t see how a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear complex is ‘supporting’ Iran against Israel. The US has and will continue to support Israel to the utmost degree. On the other hand, it is possible to work constructively with your enemies, and in this the Cold War is littered with examples (SALT, and the anti-ABM treaty).

As for the US being able to unilaterally decide who is ‘rogue’ and who is ‘reasonable,’ I thought that was already tried, to ruinous effect, during the Bush presidency. Though I guess once a member of the ‘Axis of Evil,’ always a member…

The entire premise of your article, and your response here, seems to be that Iran will be just one more garden-variety nuclear power, despite the fact that they are somewhat irrational religious zealots who regularly threaten world peace with their words and actions.

Besides this baseless assumption you’ve made, there is no inherent hypocrisy in preventing a rogue nation that has sworn to wipe out our allies and us from getting a bomb, at the same time we tolerate a relatively reasonable nation like Israel having nukes for defensive reasons. Unless, of course, one accepts your premise that all nations are equally responsible and trustworthy – an extremely naïve notion at best. Israel’s interests are not perfectly aligned with ours, but they are probably 80% aligned, while Iran is possibly 2% aligned. So, we can and ought to choose who to support.

Your point #3 is one more false either-or choice you’re presenting as fact, where you imply that if we don’t validate this treaty, then the only alternative is bombing every mildly unfriendly nuclear every 10 years. Of course we could never do that, but we could bomb every rogue nation that isn’t yet nuclear armed, every ten years or even every 5 years if we wanted to. And we could do it with very little expenditure of wealth and without a ground invasion.

Glad you enjoyed the article!

To answer your questions:

1) Obviously the implication is not that a rotary telephone is as easy to build as a nuclear bomb. The point is that the technology is old and is becoming easier to master over time.

2) The editorial discusses the long-term interests of the United States, which frequently diverge from Israel, as we are sometimes reminded when Israel pursues a policy in its own interests to the detriment of US foreign policy. As for the other Gulf states, normalizing with their sectarian enemy does not mean supporting their sectarian enemy against them. Is the problem a fear that they’re going to ‘turn their back’ on the US? They won’t. They still need the US and that’s not going to change.

You could say Israel is the ROC post-normalization with China, when the US doubled down on material support and a security guarantee to make amends for its ‘betrayal.’ I don’t think this situation is comparable in that sense, though.

3) So you’re down for bombing Iran and any other nuclear transgressor (who is unfriendly to the West) every 10 years. Sure, it’s possible – as the editorial pointed out. But it will only hasten the decline of US power vis-a-vis its competitors (China feels no compulsion to empty its coffers policing the world at present time), and make it all the more difficult to implement effective non-proliferation regimes given the inherent hypocrisy of bombing Iran and ignoring Israel’s nuclear program, speak nothing of the recent unilateral nuclear break-outs of Pakistan and India. I guess it boils down to whether or not you believe these countries will ‘learn their lesson’ after being bombed. I for one do not.