THE DOUBLE STANDARDS OF ANTI-PROLIFERATION

There's a moral problem with the traditional practice of preventing nuclear proliferation, which Kerry sees as the chief task of national security. It doesn't sit well with Kant's notion that to believe in a moral law, we must consistently will that it be binding on all mankind. Anti-proliferation is one rule for us, another one for them.

To paraphrase Dave Barry (in his brilliant comedic history of the US, Dave Barry Slept Here, where he used it to describe the Monroe Doctrine), the anti-nuclear proliferation argument is this:

1. Nations which are not permanent members of the UN Security Council are not allowed to build and maintain arsenals of nuclear weapons.
2. But we are.
3. Ha ha ha.

Naturally, this argument is popular with nationals of the US, UK, France, Russia and China.

It is also popular with hundreds of millions of nationals of non-nuclear Western allies, who are pacific enough not to want to be in the nuclear club, and who trust five powers to use nukes wisely (that is, not use them) more than they trust (now) eight, or (in the future, maybe) fifteen, twenty, or fifty.

But the dispossessed and the angry of this world, and those who perceive the West as an alien or an enemy power, will always perceive this situation as unequal and unfair. And they're right. Which is why it will be hard to win the argument with them in the long run.

Kerry proposes more effective repression of poor countries' nuclear ambitions. Safety for us, screw them. Bush does not embrace the nuclear proliferation double standard: he wants to keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists' hands, but he doesn't have the same criteria for states. Instead, he offers at least a glimpse, a glimmer, of a world transformed by liberty.