The diffusion of new technology, whether gunpowder or cell phones, is unstoppable. Nuclear weapons technology is no exception. On the contrary, U.S. policies for preventing proliferation have actually accelerated it. First, the United States shared its nuclear know-how with Britain and France. Then it was benignly permissive toward Israel’s clandestine program. More recently, its swift reversal from hostility to accommodation of India’s and Pakistan’s programs—after each demonstrated a nuclear explosion—has made a joke of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the global nonproliferation regime.

Now, as the “axis of evil” states are the primary focus of U.S. nonproliferation policy, President George W. Bush’s threat of regime change has only driven Iran and North Korea to accelerate their efforts. North Korea has already called the president’s bluff, and Iran may delay but will not yield. Bombing their nuclear facilities might set them back, but nothing short of a ground invasion will stop them outright at this point.

As a result, pursuit of nonproliferation is undercutting the very security interests it was intended to promote: regional stability. Since the end of World War II, regional stability has been the United States’ highest priority interest in both the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. Strangely, though, the United States pursues a destabilizing and feckless nonproliferation policy at the expense of that interest. Rather than recognizing that states most often seek nuclear weapons when they feel insecure, the administration has pushed the world’s most fragile and dangerous regimes into a corner. The results have been predictable. The invasion of Iraq has made that region less stable than at anytime since 1945. U.S. policy in Northeast Asia has already yielded a nuclear-capable North...