A Good Week for the Axis of Evil
Two of its three countries made strides in acquiring nukes, and Bush
should get a big chunk of the blame.
by Rosa Brooks
There was good news and bad news for authoritarians this week.
On the international front, the authoritarian regime in North Korea
scored a major victory, testing a nuclear weapon in defiance of the United
States and the world community. Sure, millions of North Koreans face
potential famine, but the "Dear Leader" himself - Kim Jong Il - is sitting
pretty.
With dissidents tucked away in prison and scarce food supplies doled
out strictly on the basis of ideology and party loyalty, Kim has every
reason to indulge in a bit of self-congratulation. Technologically, his
nuclear test may have been only a partial success, but it sure did get the
world's attention. As the Korean Central News Agency - the "Dear Leader's"
media mouthpiece - re****ted on Monday, this is "truly a stirring time when
all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the
building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation."
Elsewhere in the "axis of evil," things are also looking good. With
the world otherwise occupied, the authoritarian Iranian regime has
continued
to suppress dissent and advance its own nuclear program, and it's surely
heartened by North Korea's "great leap forward."
Al Qaeda must be pleased by the news too. Because Kim has always
made
clear his willingness to sell lethal technologies to the highest bidder,
Al
Qaeda has another potential purveyor of nuclear weapons.
Even Saddam Hussein may be enjoying the week's news. After all, he's
having a ball at his Baghdad trial, while the U.S. struggles to respond to
the rising tide of violence in Iraq and is impotent against Iran and North
Korea.
If the "axis of evil" keeps making great leaps forward, we may
someday
see an Asia where a nuclear North Korea is a major power-broker, a Middle
East where a nuclear Iran is a major power-broker, and a destabilized
world
where terrorist groups hold states hostage through their possession of
nuclear technologies.
Back on the domestic front, however, this week's news was a
humiliating setback for the United States' homegrown authoritarians -
a.k.a.
the Bush administration - who once pledged to keep nuclear weapons away
from
the "axis of evil."
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration used a mix of tough
sanctions
and incentives to keep North Korea and Iran from becoming urgent threats
to
global security. Though imperfect, that approach produced results. Under
President Clinton, for instance, the North Koreans produced no new
plutonium, conducted no nuclear weapons tests and produced no new nuclear
weapons.
But like Kim and the Iranian mullahs, our own "Dear Leader" -
President Bush - prizes ideology and loyalty uber alles.
When he took office, he refused to have anything to do with the
policies embraced by his predecessors. Instead of using diplomacy and a
careful balance of carrots and sticks, Bush just blustered and threatened.
Dividing the world into good and evil, black and white, Bush insisted that
he wouldn't negotiate with evil. And he tolerated no internal dissent.
When
then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell praised Clinton for reining in
North
Korean nuclear ambitions, Bush sent out Vice President Dick Cheney to
issue
a public rebuke.
Today, with North Korea and Iran openly thumbing their noses at us,
we're seeing the predictable result of Bush's rigid and simplistic
policies.
Of course, Bush's foolish policies were sup****ted by all too many
Americans - particularly those who share Bush's penchant for
authoritarian-style political thinking. Data from the National Election
Study suggest that, in recent years, those Americans with authoritarian
personalities have flocked to the Republican Party.
Writing in the Democratic Strategist, Jonathan Weiler and Marc
Hetherington note that "authoritarian personalities" are characterized by
"a
general moral, political and social intolerance, an aversion to ambiguity
and a related desire for clear and unambiguous authority." Given their
"antipathy toward complexity and moral ambiguity," authoritarians prefer
"clear and simply stated solutions to vexing problems." And guess what?
When
you introduce voters with authoritarian personalities to Bush's "you're
with
us or you're against us" foreign policy, it's a match made in heaven!
But the real world is messy and ambiguous rather than black and
white.
In the real world, simplistic solutions that appeal to authoritarian
personalities often backfire. Certainly, when it comes to the "axis of
evil," the Bush administration's rigid, reductionist, good-versus-evil
policies have only enhanced the power of our authoritarian foreign
enemies.
Bottom line? This was a good week for foreign authoritarians, and a
bad week for our homegrown ones.
But there's a silver lining for our local authoritarians. If the
North
Koreans or the Iranians ever do manage to take over the globe, our
homegrown
authoritarians may have to go through a brief period of reeducation. But
after that, they're gonna fit right in.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
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