The U.N. Inspections in Iraq: Lessons for On-Site Verification
The author, a former government official and senior fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, lays out clearly the lessons of the Iraq inspection effort. She covers a wide range of problems, from the mundane (the physical burdens of suiting up to visit contaminated sites) to the intangible (the psychology of self-censorship). The gist of the argument is simple: inspection is a much more difficult business than one would think, even when the subject is nominally cooperative. It is a great pity that the publishers have put such an absurd price on this book, because it deserves a wider distribution than libraries.
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Nuclear weapons, as great enhancers of national power, are attractive to U.S. allies, orphan states left outside the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and hostile rogue states. The collapse of the Soviet Union has brought into the open the growing desire for nuclear status, which the United States will have to discourage through continuing diplomacy and security commitments. Thwarting rogue states like Iraq and North Korea may eventually require preventive war, though it might take a nuclear exchange for Washington to reach that conclusion.
Michael J. Glennon got it wrong: don't count the UN Security Council out yet.
Though nuclear weapons were not exploded in the coalition war against Iraq, they were 'used' in the sense of deterring use of chemical weapons by Iraq; however, US warnings might perhaps have been more carefully phrased, in order to show consistency with a 'no first use' policy. The war should also have served to heighten the need to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

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