ABSTRACT
First, should the United States or other countries have been disturbed by Iraq’s WMD programs? How did they menace American interests? Even those who opposed the Bush administration’s policy wanted to see these programs, if not Saddam himself, eliminated, but we should remember Waltz’s argument that the spread of nuclear weapons will bring stability, regardless of the characteristics of the regime and its leader.5 The issue is too large to be fully addressed here, but it clearly is a mistake to jump from the fact that Saddam was evil to the conclusion that his possession of WMD would have threatened the United States and world peace. Would Saddam’s nuclear weapons have given him greater influence in the region? Could these weapons have done anything other than deter an unprovoked attack on him? In back of many of the disagreements about the consequences of Iraqi nuclear weapons lay undebated differences in beliefs about how nuclear weapons change foreign policies.
