But you raise a very important point. This is a complicated set of questions, one that the president will have to weigh very carefully, because it certainly is something the Chinese have been very adamant about. I mean, the ballistic missile defenses seem to have their roots in a notion that somehow we are going to be able, or you are going to be able in the United States to be able to defend yourself against any eventuality, whereas arms control is a notion of trying to make a safer world for everybody, and particularly in the presidential election context, and the positions taken by the Bush campaign. At least here some of us get the impression that if Bush is elected president that arms control, if not totally discarded, will be very much secondary to this concern about defending the United States with ballistic missile defenses. Well, I don't want to get into electoral politics, but I do think it's important to see national missile defense in a context that prefers arms control solutions.
Prevention is our first preference and priority.
Well, the first thing we rely on is deterrence. But there are reasons to believe, in the case of a country like North Korea or Iran, that the traditional notions of deterrence might not work. And I'm not thinking here that North Korea would launch an attack on the United States out of the blue. We have an alliance relationship with South Korea. North Korea might believe that if they had a nuclear and missile capability that could wipe out a U.S. city that in an emergency we would be less likely to come to the aid of our ally.