Defining Nuclear capability
Continuing on a theme I touched on in the post about the German BND’s Iranian Assessment, comes this editorial from the Washington Times regarding Secretary of State Clinton’s most recent revision of what it means to be a “Nuclear power”:
Asked by NBC’s David Gregory if the effort to keep North Korea from going nuclear had failed, Mrs. Clinton answered, “No, I don’t think so, because their program is still at the beginning stages.” In other words, two nuclear tests and a stockpile of seven or eight nuclear weapons are no longer enough to join the club. Tough luck Pyongyang, you’ve been blackballed.
This would simply be an exercise in semantics if it weren’t for the probability that Iran will soon test its own nuclear weapon. This administration, like its predecessor, has said that an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability would be unacceptable. But if Iran conducts a nuclear test sometime in the coming months, that apparently will not indicate the failure of diplomacy any more than the North Korean tests have. Faced with defeat, the State Department will define it away.
Read the whole thing.