The Nuclear Hypocrisy of America

Written on August 30, 2006

Iranian President Ahmadinejad is an extremely sharp leader, and his challenge of President Bush to have a debate on global issues has been one of his most intelligent recent political moves. The offer was not just intelligent because he knew that Bush would not rise to the challenge. The offer was not just intelligent because it showed the world community that, while the U.S. seems to enjoy playing Battleship, Iran will choose to play chess. The offer was intelligent because we cannot win such a debate. Debates are never won by the party who carries a higher degree of hypocrisy.

Though I am not a supporter of the sometimes violent, inflammatory words of Ahmadinejad, and though I am not a proponent of nuclear arms proliferation, I do believe that Ahmadinejad has every right to question American intentions and actions. While we go around attempting to coerce other nations into halting their development of nuclear capabilities and refraining from nuclear weapons testing, we have not made such moves back home.

In September of 1996, the world’s nations had an opportunity to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. As the name clearly indicates, this treaty would place important bans on the testing of nuclear weapons. But in order to become active, the treaty had to be ratified by all 44 of the “Annex 2” nations. As of recently, 10 such nations have still not ratified it, and America is one of these nations. In fact, take a look at the prestigious group we have chosen to be a part of: Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Pakistan, India, Israel, China, North Korea and, what do you know, Iran. They are a fairly high-powered group of nations if you ask me… and the type of power that they have is not the type of power anyone should ever want to use.

In 2003, to further complicate this issue, we invaded Iraq in search of these kinds of weapons of mass destruction, and we found none. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad continues to claim that Iran is developing nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes, and we have no evidence to prove otherwise. So while Ahmadinejad’s provocative rhetoric against Israel and the West might lead most people to be skeptical of his peaceful claims, we Americans are now coming close to reliving the same mistakes we made in our actions toward Iraq. We are attempting to combat a volatile leader with coercive strategies that are based on hypocritical standards.

And the final piece of this hypocrisy is perhaps the most important piece of all. We are the ones that dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So maybe it is about time that we stopped diverting our focus overseas and looked in a mirror at the changes that we ourselves have to make. Coercive and violent methods are short-term solutions to problems that have often been developing for a long time. And they will not work. Furthermore, America’s actions seem to continue to imply that we think we are the parents of the world’s nations, while instead we so desperately need to become their ally. These international problems will continue to be problems until we begin to use one of the most important and effective methods of leadership and diplomacy: leading by example.

To learn more about leadership and politics,

purchase the book The Makings of a President at:

www.inspiringrevolutions.com/presidentbook.php

To learn more about global and political trends,

purchase Thriving at the Brink of Disaster at:

www.inspiringrevolutions.com/thriving.php

To begin applying these ideas to your life, answer the questions below:

- Where in your life do you ask people to do what you aren’t willing to do? Where in your life do you ask people to stop doing what you aren’t willing to stop?

- What criticisms do you have of other people in your life or in the world? Where in your life do you do the same type of thing that you criticize others for doing?

- In what ways can you lead by example in the changes you wish others would make? What has prevented you from doing so already?

- What are your common distrusts of other people? What are you afraid of giving up? What are you afraid of other people having?

- In what ways do you hold onto power that you don’t want others to have? In what ways do you try to make others dependent on you so that you can try to coerce or manipulate them to do what you want?

- What causes you to believe that you are more able or responsible to handle power than others? Have you ever faltered in your use of power? Have you ever abused your power?

- Have your own fear-based actions ever held someone back from actually having the opportunity to become more responsible in their handling of a new “power?”

- Do you ever open yourself up and allow yourself to be vulnerable by trusting other people to have the ability and responsibility to handle “power” that could affect you?

- Have you ever been paranoid about someone simply because you had a distorted perception that was based on a lack of information or even misinformation? Was the closed nature of your relationship a part of what prevented you from having the right information and trusting their intentions?

- What actions can you now take to develop more open and trusting relationships with the people (or the kind of people) that you have the most difficulty trusting?