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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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I don't think it's clear that American foreign policy has been, in the long run, to reduce nuclear proliferation.

If I were a leader of a country contemplating a nuclear weapons program I'd look at the examples of Kim and Qadaffi.

America made a bunch of noises against North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, and has imposed sanctions in response to its success. But in the end this appears to have secured North Korea against military intervention.

Contrast with Qadaffi, who on his own accord negotiated to end his WMD programs in consideration for normalizing diplomatic relations and lifting of sanctions. He was rewarded with what was a likely color revolution that resulted in a knife in his ass.

So do you want to be Kim or Qadaffi? The winning move seems to be to develop your nuclear program in secret, or under very heavy fortification, so that it can't be preemptively destroyed. Then once you have your nukes, the West will leave you alone.

The US certainly sparked some prolif itself with foreign policy (mostly Iraq + Afghanistan, Libya was more of a European-led conflict). But on net, the US has been the biggest leader of antiprolif by far. Very few middle powers had nukes under American unipolarity, but that's almost certainly going to change over the coming decades.