A confluence of technologies, from the Internet to biotechnology, is making it easier and easier for far-flung hatred to assume organized form, intersect with weapons technology and constitute unprecedently potent terrorism. This growing lethality of hatred may be the biggest long-term problem we face.
Here’s a response favored by many left-of-center and right-of-center thinkers. Address the “demand side” — the desire to obtain and use nuclear and biological weapons — by reducing the number of people who hate the U.S. and the West. Address the “supply side” by improving arms control.
Neocons take the opposite tack: degrade the arms control infrastructure (the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, etc.) and antagonize the masses.
You can even do both at once! President Bush undermined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by agreeing to give nuclear technology to India, a nonsignatory. This ratcheted up anti-Americanism in Pakistan — a Muslim nation with nukes, jihadist recruiters and an unstable government.
From a column in today’s New York Times by Robert Wright titled “The Neocon Paradox.” (Also available here.)
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