Nuclear Lesson from Libya: Don't Be Like Qaddafi, Be Like Kim Jong Il

Hello citizens of HuffPost. Tad Daley here, author of APOCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World. With the demise of Moammar Qaddafi, I thought I would post for the HuffPost community an essay I published one week ago in The Christian Science Monitor. It argues that the single most important geopolitical consequence of NATO's air assault directed at overthrowing the Libyan regime -- woops, sorry, I mean NATO's impartial effort to protect innocent Libyan civilians -- will be the irresistible incentive it provides for many other states, which might someday find themselves in the crosshairs of the West, to seek (or retain) nuclear deterrents of their own.

It's difficult not to conclude that Qadhafi's passing does anything but amplify this case.

Get a nuclear deterrent? Or give up your WMD program because the West promises to welcome you into the international community if you do so -- and then, less than 8 years later, defanged and defenseless in the face of a military assault by that same West, die in a ditch.

It's called "Don't Be Like Qaddafi, Be Like Kim Jong Il."

Read it in full here.