The Ludricous Idea Of Nuclear Reduction

How Cutting Nuclear Arsenals Could Make World War III More Likely

Loren Thompson , CONTRIBUTOR

President-elect Trump has not made up his mind how to deal with the threat of nuclear war, but give him credit for at least acknowledging the problem. Most politicians choose to ignore the 800-megaton gorilla in the room, even though it's the one manmade threat that could wipe out American democracy before inauguration day.

Trump began his candidacy speaking out about the need to modernize the nation's aging nuclear arsenal, a topic on which he was 100% correct. He later suggested that allies like Japan and South Korea might need to develop their own nuclear arsenals, which was unsettling but a logical conclusion if the U.S. ceased extending a nuclear "umbrella" over allies. (Why would the U.S. be willing to risk its own destruction to protect some other country?)

More recently, Trump said the U.S. should "expand" its nuclear capabilities, and then on January 15 he proposed perhaps trading away economic sanctions against Russia in return for reductions in Moscow's own nuclear arsenal.

President-elect Trump has been talking about America's nuclear capabilities since his candidacy began. Nothing he has said so far sounds as outlandish as what President Obama said during his early months in office. (U.S. Department of Energy/Wikimedia)

President-elect Trump has been talking about America's nuclear capabilities since his candidacy began. Nothing he has said so far sounds as outlandish as what President Obama said during his early months in office. (U.S. Department of Energy/Wikimedia)

Clearly, the president-elect hasn't settled on how he wants to contain the greatest threat to U.S. security. But he would have to get a good deal more outlandish to match the position President Obama espoused during the early months of his first term. Obama actually advocated total nuclear disarmament, which would have been a huge windfall for any foreign dictator capable of hiding a few weapons while everyone else went to zero. Obama's position also would have deprived NATO of its most potent deterrent against conventional attack.

So let's not get too worked up about a few Trump sound-bites concerning nuclear weapons. So far, he hasn't said anything as crazy as the newly elected President Obama did. But let's also hope President Trump takes an early brief on why the U.S. has the kind of nuclear arsenal it does, because nuclear arms reductions aren't like getting illegal guns off the street in Manhattan -- if you do it the wrong way, you can make yourself much less safe.

A coherent nuclear strategy must acknowledge two fundamental facts: (1) Russia has enough nuclear weapons to wipe out our country, and (2) we have no real defense against that danger other than retaliation. The threat of retaliation is what we call "deterrence" -- Russia restrains itself from attacking because it knows that would be an act of suicide. No kidding, if ordered to do so America's military could destroy pretty much everything of value in Russia by sundown today.

Obviously, avoiding such a fate is the top priority of leaders in both countries. However, what matters in this kind of "mutual hostage" relationship is not how many weapons a country has before it suffers a surprise attack, but how many remain after. It's the weapons that can survive and retaliate that deter a surprise attack in the first place.

Which is why leaders have to be really careful about how they cut their arsenals. If the U.S. were to trade away its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles as former defense secretary William Perry recently suggested, and then the Russians figured out how to track our missile-launching submarines at sea, it would only take two dozen Russian warheads to disarm America in a surprise attack. The Russians have over a thousand warheads capable of doing the job.

Any such operation would be extremely risky, but with only 14 ballistic-missile submarines and a handful of bomber bases in the strategic force, it could be a tempting move in a crisis. Having hundreds of ICBMs in hardened silos that would each require multiple warheads to take out thus is crucial to deterring nuclear Armageddon in an imaginary scenario where the oceans become transparent and Moscow can target our subs.

Nobody seriously expects the Russians will be able to target our undersea deterrent in the foreseeable future. In fact, the next-generation Columbia class of ballistic-missile subs will probably be the most secure part of our nuclear force through the end of the century. But as Trump himself has learned in the business world, it doesn't make sense to put all your eggs in one basket. You need to have options if your enemy scores a major breakthrough in the targeting department.

The bottom line here is that America needs a diverse array of nuclear forces to assure the Russians are deterred from launching a surprise attack, because if they figure out how to disarm us in a first strike, heaven knows we've given them a good reason for doing so.

So let's not confuse cutting weapons stockpiles with becoming safer. What makes us safe from nuclear attack is the certainty our enemies have that any act of aggression would be suicidal. We need all three legs of the nuclear triad -- missiles on land, missiles at sea, and long-range bombers -- to make sure Moscow has no illusions. Modernizing this force over the next several decades will require about 1% of the federal budget. If Washington tries to save money by skipping a few steps on nuclear modernization, we could lose everything.

So Much For Nuclear Reduction

U.S.A. and Russia aren’t eager to reduce nuclear weapons

A South Korean soldier stands under a display of North and South Korea’s missiles December 12, 2002 at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea. (Getty Images)A South Korean soldier stands under a display of North and South Korea’s missiles December 12, 2002 at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea. (Getty Images)

On June 13, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its annual nuclear forces report highlighting the ‘current trends and developments in world nuclear arsenals’.
‘The data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, none of the nuclear weapon-possessing states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future,’ the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute claims.

At the start of 2016 nine states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—possessed approximately 4,120 operationally deployed nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possessed a total of about 15,395 nuclear weapons compared to 15,850 in early 2015, according to SIPRI’s official website.
In 2016, the Institute estimated that Russia had 7, 290 nuclear warheads, including deployed warheads that are placed on the missiles or located on the bases with operational forces, while USA – 7,000.

At the same time, both Russia and the USA have extensive and expensive nuclear modernization programs under way. The USA, for example, plans to spend USD 348 billion during 2015–24 on maintaining and comprehensively updating its nuclear forces. Some estimates suggest that the USA’s nuclear weapon modernization program may cost up to USD 1 trillion over the next 30 years.
‘Despite the ongoing reduction in the number of weapons, the prospects for genuine progress towards nuclear disarmament remain gloomy,’ comments Shannon Kile, Head of the SIPRI Nuclear Weapons Project. ‘All the nuclear weapon-possessing states continue to prioritize nuclear deterrence as the cornerstone of their national security strategies.’

Russia And Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize (Dan 7:7)

Russia’s nuclear weapons buildup challenges Obama’s reduction goal

An inert Minuteman 3 missile sits in a training launch tube at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. President Obamas decision to reduce the role of nuclear weapons is being challenged by Russias buildup of nuclear forces. (Associated Press)

By Bill Gertz – – Wednesday, September 2, 2015

President Obama’s decision two years ago to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. military and defense policies is being challenged by Russia’s large-scale buildup of nuclear forces, along with Moscow’s revised nuclear doctrine and recent threats to use the weapons.

The U.S. guidance was outlined in a 2013 White House order called Presidential Policy Directive-24, which calls for reducing the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in national security strategy and maintaining deterrence with smaller nuclear forces.

A Pentagon report to Congress states that the administration is seeking “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” At the same time, the U.S. views the safety, security and effectiveness of nuclear arms as a deterrent that must be maintained “as long as nuclear weapons exist.”

One flaw in the White House guidance was outlined in the classified PDD-24. PDD-24 says a “key part” of the new guidance is a more benign global security environment, but that has not come to pass under Mr. Obama’s watch.

Nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran remain, and China’s nuclear buildup remains a concern.

Fear of the nuclear threat posed by Russia, too, has actually become more serious than when the order was signed by Mr. Obama.

The 2013 order erroneously states that despite differences, “Russia and the United States are no longer adversaries and the prospects of a military confrontation between us have declined dramatically.”

That assumption has become less valid after Russian annexation of Crimea, continuing destabilization efforts in eastern Ukraine and announced threats by Moscow against Eastern European states.

The new Russian threat also has been highlighted by recent statements by senior military and defense leaders.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, the nominee to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, “If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.”

Several days later, NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said Russian revanchism has undermined strategic stability. Russia “is a nation that possesses a pretty vast nuclear inventory, and talks about the use of that inventory very openly,” he said on PBS. “And they talk about using, as a matter of course, nuclear weapons. For that reason, these senior leaders, I believe, see that as a major threat.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that what has changed under President Vladimir Putin is that Russia has become an “antagonist,” forcing the United States to adjust its military posture to deter Russia and support allies.

Because the White House’s guidance anticipated a different scenario than what is actually occurring, the Pentagon and the U.S. Strategic Command, the war-fighting command in charge of preparing for a nuclear conflict, are said to be preventing full implementation of the plan. The presidential order requires an annual review of the security environment, but defense officials say so far no review has been carried out.

Adjustment of the nuclear employment guidance most likely will be worked out after Gen. Dunford takes over as chairman Oct. 1.

Pentagon and U.S. Strategic Command representatives had no comment on the new nuclear employment guidance.

Time To Nuke Up One Last Time (Daniel 7)

Russia ends US nuclear security alliance

Accord worked to keep stockpiles secure

The United States helped Russia secure and dismantle nuclear weapons in the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs.

By Bryan Bender

Globe Staff  January 19, 2015

WASHINGTON — The private diplomatic meetings took place over two days in mid-December in a hotel overlooking Moscow’s Red Square.

But unlike in previous such gatherings, the sense of camaraderie, even brotherhood, was overshadowed by an uncomfortable chill, according to participants.

In the previously undisclosed discussions, the Russians informed the Americans that they were refusing any more US help protecting their largest stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from being stolen or sold on the black market. The declaration effectively ended one of the most successful areas of cooperation between the former Cold War adversaries.

“I think it greatly increases the risk of catastrophic terrorism,” said Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia and an architect of the “cooperative threat reduction” programs of the 1990s.

Official word came in a terse, three-page agreement signed on Dec. 16. A copy was obtained by the Globe, and a description of the Moscow meeting was provided by three people who attended the session or were briefed on it. They declined to be identified for security reasons.

Russia’s change of heart was not unexpected.

The Globe reported in August that US officials were concerned about the future of the programs, because of increased diplomatic hostilities between the United States and Russia. The New York Times reported in November that it appeared likely many of the programs would end.

On hand for the Moscow meeting were nearly four dozen of the leading figures on both sides who have been working to safeguard the largest supplies of the world’s deadliest weapons, according to the three-page agreement.

The group included officials from the US Department of Energy, its nuclear weapons labs, the Pentagon, and the State Department, and a host of Russian officials in charge of everything from dismantling nuclear submarines to arms control.

Specialists said the final meeting was a dismaying development in a joint effort that the United States has invested some $2 billion in and had been a symbol of the thaw between East and West and of global efforts to prevent the spread of doomsday weapons. An additional $100 million had been budgeted for the effort this year and many of the programs were envisioned to continue at least through 2018.

Since the cooperative agreement began, US experts have helped destroy hundreds of weapons and nuclear-powered submarines, pay workers’ salaries, install security measures at myriad facilities containing weapons material across Russia and the former Soviet Union, and conduct training programs for their personnel.

Officials said estimates of how much bomb-grade material has either been destroyed or secured inside the former Soviet Union is classified but insist the stockpiles are enough to make many hundreds of atomic bombs.

The work has been driven by deep concern that large supplies of nuclear material could be stolen by terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction or diverted by underpaid workers susceptible to bribes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last year to invade the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and then back an armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine prompted a series of US and EU sanctions against Russia, which stirred fears that the era of nuclear cooperation was at risk.

Now security upgrades have been cancelled at some of Russia’s seven “closed nuclear cities,” which contain among the largest stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, according to the official “record of meeting” signed by the sides in December.

The Russians also told the Americans that joint security work at 18 civilian facilities housing weapons material would cease, effective Jan. 1. Another project at two facilities to convert highly enriched uranium into a less dangerous form also has been stopped.

Lack of US funding and expertise also jeopardizes planned construction of high-tech surveillance systems at 13 buildings that store nuclear material, as well as a project to deploy radiation detectors at Russian ports, airports, and border crossings to catch potential nuclear smugglers.

A limited amount of cooperation will continue in other countries that have highly enriched uranium that originated in Russia. The two sides also will continue working on ways to secure industrial sources of radioactive material, which could be used to make a “dirty bomb.’’ The Russian decision will not affect inspections that both sides regularly conduct of each other’s active nuclear arsenals as part of arms control treaties.

But that is little consolation for those like Siegfried S. Hecker, one of the nation’s premier experts on nuclear weapons. Hecker, a former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has traveled more than 40 times to Russia since 1992 as part of the joint security efforts. While he said vast improvements have been made in Russia’s atomic security since the end of the Cold War, “you’re never done.”

“They need continuous attention and international cooperation,” he said in an interview. “You cannot afford to isolate your country, your own nuclear complex, from the rest of the world.”

The Russian embassy in Washington, and the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation in Moscow, did not respond to requests for comment. In the December document, the Russians said they are capable of securing their own nuclear facilities, out of Russia’s federal budget.

But a number of former US government officials and nuclear experts expressed doubts about the Russian pledge, pointing to recent economic troubles.

“The Russians say they are going to put a lot more of their resources into this,” said Nunn, who is cochairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington nonprofit that works to reduce the dangers of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. “That would be good news if they do, but with their economic challenges now and with the huge distrust built because of Ukraine and the deterioration of the ruble, the proof will be in the pudding.”

Another key architect of the programs, former Republican senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who last visited some of the facilities in 2012, said he wonders if the Russians have the expertise needed to keep track of the vast amount of nuclear bomb material.

“The housekeeping by the Russians has not been comprehensive,” Lugar said in an interview. “There had been work done [with the United States] hunting down nuclear materials. This is now terminated.”

Some warn that the distrust on both sides could bleed into other areas, including arms control treaties.
“It’s important for the US and Russia to have nuclear security, but it is also important for us to believe we have nuclear security,” said Matthew Bunn, a weapons proliferation specialist at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. “That’s hard to do just by saying so.”
US government officials, for their part, insist they are trying to make the best of it.

“We are encouraged that they stated multiple times that they intend to finish this work,” said David Huizenga, who runs the nonproliferation programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy. Huizenga led the US delegation to Moscow last month.

But he said US officials still hope that the Russians will change their mind and restart a partnership that by most accounts has significantly strengthened global security.

“[It will be] harder to resurrect if we don’t actually engage in any meaningful way,” Huizenga said.
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeBender.

OBummer, Nuclear Abolition Is Not In God’s Plan (Rev 15-16)

Obama’s Nuclear Hypocrisy: He Promised A World Without Nukes, What Happened?

Instead, nuclear abolition itself is being abolished.

By James Carroll

Mon Dec. 15, 2014 6:30 AM EST

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
Mark these days. A long-dreaded transformation from hope to doom is taking place as the United States of America ushers the world onto the no-turning-back road of nuclear perdition. Once, we could believe there was another way to go. Indeed, we were invited to take that path by the man who is, even today, overseeing the blocking of it, probably forever.
It was one of the most stirring speeches an American president had ever given. The place was Prague; the year was 2009; the president was the recently sworn in Barack Obama. The promise made that day is worth recalling at length, especially since, by now, it is largely forgotten:
“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act… So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now, we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, ‘Yes, we can…'”
President Obama had been in office only three months when, boldly claiming his place on the world stage, he unequivocally committed himself and his country to a nuclear abolition movement that, until then, had at best existed somewhere on the distant fringes of power politics. “I know,” he added,
“that there are some who will question whether we can act on such a broad agenda. There are those who doubt whether true international cooperation is possible… and 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.”
The simple existence of nuclear weapons, an American president declared, paved the road to perdition for humanity.

Obama as The Captain Ahab of Nuclear Weapons
At that moment, the foundations for an imagined abolitionist world were modest indeed, but not nonexistent. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had, for instance, struck a bargain between nuclear haves and have-nots, under which a path to abolition was treated as real. The deal seemed clear enough: the have-nots would promise to forego obtaining nukes and, in return, the world’s reigning nuclear powers would pledge to take, in the words of the treaty, “effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.”
For decades before the Obama moment, however, the superpower arsenals of nuclear warheads continued to grow like so many mushrooms, while new nuclear states—Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea—built their own impressive arsenals. In those years, with the singular exception of South Africa, nuclear-weapons states simply ignored their half of the NPT bargain and the crucial clause mandating progress toward eventual disarmament was all but forgotten.
When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and the next year Americans elected as president Bill Clinton, who was famously against the Vietnam War, it was at least possible to imagine that nukes might go the way of internationally banned chemical weapons. But Washington chose otherwise. Despite a paucity of enemies anywhere on Earth, the Pentagon’s 1994 Nuclear Posture Review insisted on maintaining the American nuclear arsenal at Cold War levels as a “hedge,” an insurance policy, against an imagined return of Communism, fascism, or something terrible in Russia anyway—and Clinton accepted the Pentagon’s position.
Soon enough, however, even prominent hawks of the Cold War era began to worry that such a nuclear insurance policy could itself ignite a global fire. In 1999, a chief architect of the nuclear mindset, Paul Nitze, stepped away from a lifetime obsession with building up nuclear power to denounce nukes as “a threat mostly to ourselves” and to explicitly call for unilateral disarmament. Other former apostles of nuclear realpolitik also came to embrace the goal of abolition. In 2008, four high priests of the cult of nuclear normalcy—former Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, and former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger—jointly issued a sacrilegious renunciation of their nuclear faith on the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page. “We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons,” they wrote, “and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal.”
Unfortunately, such figures had come to Jesus only after leaving office, when they were exempt from the responsibility of matching their high-flown rhetoric with the gritty work of making it real.
Obama in Prague was another matter. He was at the start of what would become an eight-year presidency and his rejection of nuclear fatalism rang across the world. Only months later, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in large part because of this stunning commitment. A core hope of the post-World-War-II peace movement, always marginal, had at last been embraced in the seat of power. A year later, at Obama’s direction, the Pentagon, in its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, actually advanced the president’s purpose, committing itself to “a multilateral effort to limit, reduce, and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide.”
“The United States,” that document promised, “will not develop new nuclear warheads.” When it came to the future of the nuclear arsenal, a program of responsible maintenance was foreseen, but no new ground was to be broken. “Life Extension Programs,” the Pentagon promised, “will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide new military capabilities.”
Obama’s timing in 2009 was critical. The weapons and delivery systems of the nuclear arsenal were aging fast. Many of the country’s missiles, warheads, strategic bombers, and nuclear-powered submarines dated back to the early Cold War era and were effectively approaching their radioactive sell-by dates. In other words, massive reductions in the arsenal had to begin before pressures to launch a program for the wholesale replacement of those weapons systems grew too strong to resist. Such a program, in turn, would necessarily mean combining the latest technological innovations with ever greater lethality in a way guaranteed to reinvigorate the entire enterprise across the world—the polar opposite of “effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.”
Obama, in other words, was presiding over a golden moment, but an apocalyptic deadline was bearing down. And sure enough, that deadline came crashing through when three things happened: Vladimir Putin resurfaced as an incipient fascist intent on returning Russia to great power status; extremist Republicans took Congress hostage; and Barack Obama found himself lashed, like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, to “the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on half a heart and half a lung.” Insiders often compare the Pentagon to Moby Dick, the Great White Whale, and Obama learned why. The peaceful intentions with which he began his presidency were slapped away by the flukes of the monster, like so many novice oarsmen in a whaling skiff.
Hence Obama’s course reversals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; hence the White House stumbles, including an unseemly succession of secretaries of defense, the fourth of whom, Ashton Carter, can reliably be counted on to advance the renewal of the nuclear force. The Pentagon’s “intangible malignity,” in Melville’s phrase, was steadily quickened by both Putin and the Republicans, but Obama’s half-devoured heart shows in nothing so much as his remarkably full-bore retreat, in both rhetoric and policy, from the goal of nuclear abolition.
A recent piece by New York Times science correspondent William J. Broad made the president’s nuclear failure dramatic. Cuts to the US nuclear stockpile initiated by George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, he pointed out, totaled 14,801 weapons; Obama’s reductions so far: 507 weapons. In 2010, a new START treaty between Moscow and Washington capped future deployed nukes at 1,500. As of this October, the US still deploys 1,642 of them and Russia 1,643; neither nation, that is, has achieved START levels, which only count deployed weapons. (Including stored but readily re-armed and targeted nukes, the US arsenal today totals about 4,800 weapons.)
In order to get the votes of Senate Republicans to ratify the START treaty, Obama made what turned out to be a devil’s bargain. He agreed to lay the groundwork for a vast “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal, which, in the name of updating an aged system, is already morphing into a full-blown reinvention of the arms cache at an estimated future cost of more than a trillion dollars. In the process, the Navy wants, and may get, 12 new strategic submarines; the Air Force wants, and may get, a new long-range strike bomber force. Bombers and submarines would, of course, both be outfitted with next-generation missiles, and we’d be off to the races. The arms races.
All of this unfolds as Vladimir Putin warms the hearts of nuclear enthusiasts everywhere not only by his aggressions in Ukraine, but also by undercutting the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by testing a new ground-launched cruise missile. Indeed, just this fall, Russia successfully launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile. It seems that Moscow, too, can modernize.
On a Twenty-First Century Road to Perdition
Responding to the early Obama vision of “effective measures” toward nuclear disarmament, and following up on that 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, senior Pentagon officials pursued serious discussions about practical measures to reduce the nuclear arsenal. Leading experts advocated a shift away from the Cold War’s orgasmic strike targeting doctrine that still necessitates an arsenal of weapons counted in the thousands.
In fact, in response to budget constraints, legal obligations under a jeopardized non-proliferation treaty, and the most urgent moral mandate facing the country, America’s nuclear strategy could shift without wrenching difficulty, at the very least, to one of “minimal deterrence.” Hardcore national security mavens tell us this. Such a shift would involve a reduction in both the deployed and stored nuclear arsenal to something like 500 warheads. Even if that goal were pursued unilaterally, it would leave more than enough weaponry to deter any conceivable state-based nuclear threat, including Russia’s, no matter what Putin may do.
Five hundred is, of course, a long way from zero and so from the president’s 2009 goal of abolition, and yet opposition even to that level would be fierce in Washington. Though disarming and disposing of thousands of nukes would cost far less than replacement, it would still be expensive, and you can count on one thing: Pentagon nuclearists would find firm allies among congressional Republicans, who would be loathe to fund such a retreat from virtue’s Armageddon. Meanwhile, confronting such cuts, the defense industry’s samurai lobbyists would unsheathe their swords.
But if a passionate Obama could make a compelling case for a nuclear-free world from Prague in 2009, why not go directly to the American people and make the case today? There is, of course, no sign that the president intends to do such a thing any longer, but if a commander-in-chief were to order nuclear reductions into the hundreds, the result might actually be a transformation of the American political conscience. In the process, the global dream of a nuclear-free world could be resuscitated and the commitment of non-nuclear states (including Iran) to refrain from nuclear-weapons development could be rescued. Most crucially, there would no longer be any rationale for the large-scale reinvention of the American nuclear arsenal, a deadly project this nation is even now preparing to launch. At the very least, a vocal rededication to an ultimate disarmament, to the actual abolition of nuclear weapons, would keep that road open for a future president to re-embark upon.
Alas, Pentagon advocates of “minimal deterrence” have already been overridden. The president’s once fiercely held conviction is now a mere shadow of itself. As happened with Ahab’s wrecked whaling ship, tumultuous seas are closing over the hope that once seized the world’s attention. Take it for granted that, in retirement and out of power, ex-president Obama will rediscover his one-time commitment to a world freed from the nuclear nightmare. He will feel the special responsibility proper to a citizen of “the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” The then-former president’s speeches on the subject will be riveting and his philanthropy will be sharply targeted. All for naught.
Because of decisions likely to be taken this year and next, no American president will ever again be able to embrace this purpose as Obama once did. Nuclear weapons will instead become a normalized and permanent part of the twenty-first century American arsenal, and therefore of the arsenals of many other nations; nuclear weapons, that is, will have become an essential element of the human future—as long as that future lasts.
So yes, mark these days down. Nuclear abolition itself is being abolished. Meanwhile, let us acknowledge, as that hopeful young president once asked us to, that we know where this road leads.
James Carroll is a Boston Globe columnist and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University. He is the author, among other works, of House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power and, most recently, Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.