Egypt and Nuclear power

Mubarak’s Son Proposes Nuclear Program - New York Times: Remarks on nuclear power by Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt’s president, raised expectations that he was being positioned as a successor. By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and MONA EL-NAGGAR, Published: September 20, 2006.

Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt’s president, proposed Tuesday that his country pursue nuclear energy, drawing strong applause from the nation’s political elite, while raising expectations that Mr. Mubarak is being positioned to replace his father as president.

The carefully crafted political speech raised the prospect of two potentially embarrassing developments for the White House at a time when the region is awash in crisis: a nuclear program in Egypt, recipient of about $2 billion a year in military and development aid from the United States, and Mr. Mubarak succeeding his father, Hosni Mubarak, as president without substantial political challenge. Simply raising the topic of Egypt’s nuclear ambitions at a time of heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear activity was received as a calculated effort to raise the younger Mr. Mubarak’s profile and to build public support through a show of defiance toward Washington, political analysts and foreign affairs experts said.

“The whole world, I don’t want to say all, but many developing countries, have proposed and started to execute the issue of alternative energy,” he said. “It is time for Egypt to put forth, and the party will put forth, this proposal for discussion about its future energy policies, the issue of alternative energy, including nuclear energy, as one of the alternatives.” He also said in a clear reference to the White House: “We do not accept visions from abroad that try to dissolve the Arab identity and the joint Arab efforts within the framework of the so-called Greater Middle East Initiative."

I think it’s interesting that the signal to the pundits and electorate of Egypt that Hosni Mubarak’s son is a serious candidate for the presidency is that he is challenging the U.S. and the world by announcing he wants his country to go nuclear. All I can think of is, what have we wrought?

The peace crowd might ultimately be right on this one. During World War II there was a race to obtain nuclear weapons, with the U.S., Germany and even Japan scrambling to become the first to have this deliverer of hell on earth. Luckily, we won that race, and because of it, we won the war.

Then Russia got nuclear weapons and Israel and India and on and on. Now, the truly bad guys are getting them, like Iran. Egypt is not necessarily one of the bad guys. They have been pretty good neighbors to Israel and the world since 1978, so I don’t have a great fear of their irrationality like I do with Iran, which wants to wipe Israel off the map.

Still, the overall picture is grim. Nuclear bombs “mushrooming” all over the place. (List of countries with nuclear weapons) One day at least one of them is going to go off, on people. You just know that. All you need is one maniac organization, like Al-Queda, or one maniac country, like Iran, and there you go.

How do we get rid of all the nukes? I don’t know. I have no idea. We’d better get smart about this, though, because the clock is ticking.

Rock

(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)

This Post’s Technorati Tags: Gamal Mubarak, nuclear weapons, Egypt, Greater Middle East, Hosni Mubarak, Al-Queda, truth

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