In the polarizing topic of nuclear disarmament it is hard not have an opinion on the issue and even harder to keep said opinion to oneself. Keeping that disclaimer in mind, my opinion hinges on one simple skepticism on the growing debate.
Second disclaimer: no one—okay, almost no one—wants to live in a world with the threat of millions of people dying because of a nuclear attack. But the gleefully ideological idea that we could just discard 10,000 nuclear weapons without any consequences is a bit short sighted.
It all comes down to practicality, as it always does when liberals get behind controversial issues, like nationalized health care and LBJ’s war on poverty. Sure, we would love for everyone to be wealthy and have health care coverage, but that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily practical or possible to accomplish. It often makes things worse.
The same applies here. In Bill Wickersham’s April seminar at Longview, he laid out mountains of solid evidence of the dangers of nuclear weapon attacks that could happen on the U.S. At one point, he said, “The chances of a terrorist nuclear attack in the next decade are above 50 percent.”
This is quite frightening.
Dismantling our nuclear arsenal does nothing to dissolve this threat, though. It would require a treaty between the U.S. and countries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea to do the same. But a similar treaty is already in place: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is ignored by North Korea, and Iran breaks its terms as if the NPT were just suggestions.
Russia and China both openly defend North Korea’s right to a space program (wink-wink), when referring to Kim Jon Il’s test launch of an intercontinental rocket. So, in order to live in a world absent of a threat of nuclear disaster, we need to rely on countries such as North Korea and Iran being rational and understanding.
At the moment, we can’t even get China to sign off on a treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions for economic reasons—but it is more likely that they will destroy their nuclear arsenal, which costs trillions of dollars to develop?
The video played at the conference stated, “There are not enough visionary leaders in congress” as the reason this issue has been ignored. He is wrong here for two reasons. One, proper “vision” should allow the apparently non-visionary leaders of congress to see the reluctance of many nations towards disarmament.
Two, the issue hasn’t been ignored. George W. Bush (cue the ominous music) “negotiated cuts (of warheads) down to 1,700-2,200 apiece by 2012,” according to The Economist.
A cautious approach to nuclear disarmament should be taken. Pres. Barack Obama can expand on the efforts taken by past presidents, including the apparently sociopathic superconservatives such as Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
June 11, 2009 at 5:50 pm
By Bill Wickersham 6/11/2009
Michael seems to be unwilling to look at the U.S. as part of the problem. The U.S. built the first atom bombs and used them against Japan. And while it is true that Iran and North Korea are very problematic, how do their arsenals compare to that of the U.S.? And was it not the U.S. under Bush Jr. who violated virtually every nuclear weapons treaty including the Non-Proliferation Treaty with its Nuclear Posture Review and other policies which threatened even non-nuclear “rogue” states. It is a bit hypocritical to focus on nations that have a handful of nuclear weapons when one has thousands in one’s own arsenal. And finally, is Michael able to explain how the U.S. could actually use nuclear weapons. An all out attack on Russia would result in suicide when the retaliating Russian missiles landed on K.C. and the rest of the country. An attack on North Korea would result in the destruction of Seoul South Korea by North Korean artillery which is minutes away from that city. The fallout from an attack on Iran would probably rain down on a host of Middle East countries, including Israel or other friendly states (depending on the prevailing winds).
It is true as Michael says that strategic nuclear disarmament will not stop terrorist attacks with suitcase bombs or dirty bombs. It is also true that terrorists do not always leave a return address, so you don’t always know who was responsible for the attack. In that case, one’s strategic nuclear weapons have no use, because it is insane to destroy a country or even one of its cities with long range missiles if you don’t know who attacked you in the first place. Michael also seemed to miss the part of my speech which noted that former nuclear “hawks” such as Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Gen. Eugene Habiger, and Gen. George Lee Butler and as host of others agree with my position that continued deployment of massive numbers of nuclear weapons is madness. I also don’t think that Michael understands the true problem with the Russian arsenal. As I pointed out in my talk, those weapons (like ours) are on hair-trigger, high alert, and the Russian command and control system is believed to be in shambles. To continue to threaten the Russians is like threatening a crazy person who has an AK-47 on hair-trigger and is pointing it at the head of the threatener. Nuclear weapons have no rational military use that will leave the user better off in the long run. Michael apparently believes that we can go on ad infinitum with out having serious nuclear accidents. He would point to the 64 year record of no nuclear accidents. I would suggest that Murphy’s Law is probably as operable with nuclear weapons as with any other human enterprise, and 64 years is only a nanosecond in the stream of history.
Bill
p.s. Michael seems to feel that LBJs War on Poverty was not practical. What was not practical was the Vietnam War which robbed the War on Poverty of all its resources. Is it more practical to go thousands of miles away to kill people who never attacked you at all, and spend billions upon billions of dollars which could markedly improve life in the homeland? It was once calculated that it took on average about three or four hundred thousand U.S. dollars just to kill one member of the National Liberation Front (Vietcong). Incidentally the practical way to feed people is to give them food when they don’t have anything to eat. If that does not happen, you end up feeding them in prison at much greater cost. b.w.
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June 11, 2009 at 7:07 pm
One of the biggest hurdles in ridding the world of all nuclear weapons is the thought that they cannot be eliminated. The saying goes that we have let the nuclear genie out of the bottle and we cannot put it back. This is of course as false as it gets. Nuclear warheads are physical objects and therefore by definition can be physically dismantled. This is not the challenge.
It is the “natural” imperfections in the way that we as humans think that is the challenge. As Albert Einstein, one of the most brilliant minds of our time and whose equation E=MC2 showed us the power that could be unleashed from a single atom, once said,” The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and therefore we drift towards nonparallel catastrophe.”
We now have a president who understands that a world free of nuclear weapons is both desirable and achievable and is under no false illusions that this mountain will be a breeze to climb. But this mountain must be climbed and, in America, public support will be the footholds and rhetoric like that of Michaels can only serve one purpose: to diminish the will of public support. The window of opportunity is here to change our modes of thinking. But changing modes of thinking dated back several thousand years is a difficult task indeed that takes courage, determination, and patience.
I would like to conclude with an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s speech given to a crowd on April 5th 2009 in Prague:
“…….there are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it’s worth setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve. But make no mistake. We know where that road leads. When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens. When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also a cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends. ”
The new nuclear weapons race is the race to disarm before we detonate. Think Outside the Bomb.
June 11, 2009 at 7:20 pm
It must also be considered that several nuclear “have-not” states feel that the nuclear “have” states have not done enough to uphold their end of Article VI of the NPT and has vowed to become nuclear “haves” if the current “haves” do not make significant progress towards disarmament at the 2010 NPT review.
June 11, 2009 at 7:46 pm
See NRDC website for a “practical” plan to Transform the U.S. Strategic Nuclear Posture and Weapons Complex while transforming into a nuclear free world.
June 13, 2009 at 1:54 am
And make no mistake, any battle, any conflict, any slaps of the tongue by anybody or any nation to anybody or any nation , any time, in this day of age and in days of the past, come down to one thing….. Rich vs.Poor.
August 19, 2009 at 9:06 am
Oh, I forgot to mention that Iran DOES NOT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS and is NOT in any violations tot he NPT treaty as the treaty gaurantees non-weapon states the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and there is not a sliver of evidence suggesting Iran of doing otherwise. The major fault of the treaty is it allows countries like the US to skate around disarmament as long as they maintain good faith negotiations towards disarmament. This was used as a barganing tool to gain commitments from other countries to not get the Bomb and over 30 years later some of these other countries are feeling a bit cheated. And now…. the United States wants to disarm. Of course it does as it spends more than the next 15 countries combined on it’s military and will then hold a decidable advantage in it’s objective to colonize everything and anything it can, including and especially space. Proliferation is a threat to these aims. Where was the vision then. I know, in the mind of the War Hawked United States of America who puts economic development and prosperity over human dignity, respect, and survival in all occasions. Good luck in your careers and I hope you get wonderful merits and make tons of cash. It comes at a cost. TIck….tick….tick….tick…tick……