Blame Moscow for NORK nukes

Former Roumanian intelligence official Ion Mihai Pacepa says Khrushchev opened up the nuclear Pandora's box and Putin is continuing his legacy.

On May 23, 2002 President George W. Bush expressed his anxiety about Iran’s dangerous venture. “Russia needs to be concerned about proliferations into a country that might view them as an enemy at some point in time. And if Iran gets weapons of mass destruction, deliverable by missile, that’s going to be a problem,” he said. “That’s going to be a problem for all of us, including Russia.”

During his May 2006 state of the nation speech President Vladimir Putin raised the specter of a new Cold War. Russia’s president portrayed the United States as his country’s “main adversary” and pledged to increase the nuclear triad of land, sea and air-based strategic weapons. “It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race,” he said in his televised address to the Russian people. “Moreover, it is going faster today. It is rising to a new technological level.”

Pinning the blame for the current nuclear proliferation on the Bush administration’s unwillingness to bribe North Korea’s playboy despot is not going to solve the current nuclear crisis. Hoping that the just-approved U.N. resolution instituting sanctions on North Korea will take care of the problem is equally illusory. Persuading Putin to stop playing nuclear Armageddon might be the best way out.