This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel’s air strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programs.
执行上述政策的成本太过昂贵（在伊拉克造成了数千亿美元的损失和数万平民的伤亡，这个数字还在不断扩大）。布什政府也因此躲避与北朝鲜和伊朗的军事对峙，尽管美国对以色列1981年空袭伊拉克的奥西拉克反应堆表示赞赏，因为那次行动使萨达姆的核计划延迟了几年之久。但归根结底，那次袭击的成功本身意味着这样有限度的干涉不可能复制，因为可能的扩散者都学会了埋藏、隐蔽或复制它们新生的武器计划。