Stop the World: military force not enough to overcome nuclear ambitions

(David Wroe and Olivia Nelson – ASPI The Strategist) The US–Israeli military campaign against Iran is unlikely to extinguish the sparks of the regime’s nuclear program, one of the world’s top arms control experts says. This raises the prospect that diplomacy and deterrence will be needed to manage the Iranian nuclear threat in future. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and founder of the respected Arms Control Wonk blog, told ASPI’s Stop the World podcast he’s sceptical that military force can resolve the proliferation challenge with countries such as Iran. While Washington and Jerusalem have maintained that the risks of a nuclear-armed Iran are intolerable and cited the nuclear program as a core justification for Operation Epic Fury, Lewis said deterrence has historically been the default mechanism for managing nuclear adversaries such as the Soviet Union and North Korea. – Stop the World: military force not enough to overcome nuclear ambitions | The Strategist