Obama Administration seeks drastic reduction in US Nuclear arsenal

[a_majoor]

The dream of a nuclear free world is Quixotic (I can think of about a half dozen web sites and books that provide enough detailed information for a determined individual or small group to make their own nuclear or thermonuclear device), but I'm sure ambitious or ruthless nations will smile, nod and carefully tuck their nukes in out of the way corners....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/barack-obama-us-nuclear-weapons

Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal

Pentagon told to map out radical cuts as president prepares to chair UN talks

President Obama's decision to order a review comes as he takes the rare step of chairing a watershed session of the UN security council.

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.

Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

Those options include:

• Reconfiguring the US nuclear force to allow for an arsenal measured in hundreds rather than thousands of deployed strategic warheads.

• Redrafting nuclear doctrine to narrow the range of conditions under which the US would use nuclear weapons.

• Exploring ways of guaranteeing the future reliability of nuclear weapons without testing or producing a new generation of warheads.

The review is due to be completed by the end of this year, and European officials say the outcome is not yet clear. But one official said: "Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president's weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role."

The move comes as Obama prepares to take the rare step of chairing a watershed session of the UN security council on Thursday. It is aimed at winning consensus on a new grand bargain: exchanging more radical disarmament by nuclear powers in return for wider global efforts to prevent further proliferation.

That bargain is at the heart of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is up for review next year amid signs it is unravelling in the face of Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions.

In an article for the Guardian today, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, argues that failure to win a consensus would be disastrous. "This is one of the most critical issues we face," the foreign secretary writes. "Get it right, and we will increase global security, pave the way for a world without nuclear weapons, and improve access to affordable, safe and dependable energy – vital to tackle climate change. Get it wrong, and we face the spread of nuclear weapons and the chilling prospect of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists."

According to a final draft of the resolution due to be passed on Thursday, however, the UN security council will not wholeheartedly embrace the US and Britain's call for eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. Largely on French insistence, the council will endorse the vaguer aim of seeking "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons".

Gordon Brown is due to use this week's UN general assembly meeting to renew a diplomatic offensive on Iran for its failure to comply with security council demands that it suspend enrichment of uranium. The issue has been given greater urgency by an International Atomic Energy Agency document leaked last week which showed inspectors for the agency believed Iran already had "sufficient information" to build a warhead, and had tested an important component of a nuclear device.

Germany is also expected to toughen its position on Iran ahead of a showdown between major powers and the Iranian government on 1 October. But it is not yet clear what position will be taken by Russia, which has hitherto opposed the imposition of further sanctions on Iran.

Moscow's stance will be closely watched for signs of greater co-operation in return for Obama's decision last week to abandon a missile defence scheme in eastern Europe, a longstanding source of irritation to Russia.

"I hope the Russians realise they have to do something serious. I don't think a deal has been done, but there is a great deal of expectation," said a British official.

Russia has approximately 2,780 deployed strategic warheads, compared with around 2,100 in the US. The abandonment of the US missile defence already appears to have spurred arms control talks currently underway between Washington and Moscow: the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, said today that chances were "quite high" that a deal to reduce arsenals to 1,500 warheads each would be signed by the end of the year.

The US nuclear posture review is aimed at clearing the path for a new round of deep US-Russian cuts to follow almost immediately after that treaty is ratified, to set lower limits not just on deployed missiles but also on the thousands of warheads both have in their stockpiles.

The Obama strategy is to create disarmament momentum in the run-up to the non-proliferation treaty review conference next May, in the hope that states without nuclear weapons will not side with Iran, as they did at the last review in 2005, but endorse stronger legal barriers to nuclear proliferation, and forego nuclear weapons programmes themselves.

"The review has up to now been in the hands of mid-level bureaucrats with a lot of knowledge, but it's knowledge drawn from the cold war. What they are prepared to do is tweak the existing doctrine," said Rebecca Johnson, the head of the Acronym Institute, a pro-disarmament pressure group. "Obama has sent them it back saying: 'Give me more options for what we can do in line with my goals. I'm not saying it's easy, but all you're giving me is business as usual.'"

 

[a_majoor]

The President of France replies:

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/25/sarkozy-mocks-obama-at-un-security-council-hello-big-media/#more-8762

Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN Security Council: Hello, Big Media?
by Maura Flynn

One of my favorite features of the Newseum in Washington, DC is the daily display of newspaper front pages from around the world. Today, Canada’s National Post was a standout with Alex Spillius’ coverage of a clash between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy.

For reasons yet to be determined, the National Post appears to have de-linked their own front page story on their website. Mr. Spillius reported a similar (albeit watered-down) version in the UK’s Telegraph.

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were, well, remarkable:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”

No American newspapers seem to have featured Sarkozy’s justifiably derisive remarks about Obama’s naivete regarding the realities of nuclear technology. Still we can be grateful for the freedom of the press, as embodied and celebrated by the Newseum — including the chilling reconstruction of segments of the Berlin Wall. These serve as a reminder that however oppressive or myopic the powers-that-be, news cannot be stifled.

 

[tomahawk6]

Obama is a dangerous man. Dangerous for the free world. Dangerous to the national security of the US.

 

[karl28]

What I laugh at is people who think a Nuke free world is safer .  All a Nuke free world means is that in stead of spending all that money on mainting Nukes it now can be used purchase more conventional arms . 

 

[kratz]

With conventional arms, some of the more radical states who are striving for nuclear power are further mitigated. While some nations like Russia and China hold higher human resources, western nations hold more raw materials and opportunities for higher training standards.

As abhorant as conflict may be to Canadians, a conventional arms war humanizes the conflict more and would be more likely to bring a faster resolution to said conflict. Through personal loss, financial loss (higher taxes, lower stocks), reduced access to materials.

Many forget the deprivations of the World Wars (in the service and at the home front) and think it would never happen again. With the use of the nuclear deterant removed, the opportunity for wider ranging wars opens. Even a mix of open warfare and some well placed nuclear devices could easily cause as much or worse hardship as experienced in the World Wars.

 

[a_majoor]

The quest for a nuclear free world is even more illogical when examined in relation to the rest of the Obama administration's initiatives. There is no logic or internal consistency:

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/09/21/choices/

Choices

Imagine a world where nuclear weapons are simultaneously a factor for stability to be invoked when arguing against US missile defense, something to be abolished when arguing against the US arsenal, and something to be feared when describing terrorism, at a time when those who seek nuclear weapons are within an ace of being left alone to develop them undisturbed, save for diplomatic inconvenience. What would you call this world? Why, our world.

Tigerhawk is perplexed at an AP analysis piece which call characterized the just-cancelled missile defense system in Eastern Europe “a grave threat to Russian national security”. Since missile defense doesn’t kill anything except things which are aimed killing millions, why is it a threat? Is it because it undermines the stabilizing effect of the Russian nuclear arsenal? Tigerhawk writes:

My understanding had been that an anti-missile missile — a missile used to shoot down an incoming offensive missile — has itself very little offensive capability, nor can it easily be reconfigured to have offensive capability. … Did Moscow mean it in the sense of the argument put forward during the Cold War that any weapons system that threatened the concept of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction, that each side would annihilate the other in a nuclear exchange) was inherently destabilizing and indeed provocative?

Tigerhawk is rightfully puzzled. Let’s grant for a moment that nuclear deterrence has kept the peace for decades. Then why is the same President who is against missile defense also attempting to abolish nuclear weapons? An advocacy organization called Global Zero says:

We believe that whatever stabilizing impact nuclear weapons may have had during the Cold War, any residual benefits of these arsenals are now overshadowed by the growing risks of proliferation and the related risk of nuclear terrorism.

In April of this year, Presidents Obama and Medvedev jointly declared their commitment to “achieving a nuclear free world”. As these two presidents and other leaders begin to pursue the important near-term measures presented in London and Prague – all of which we fully endorse – we are developing a practical, end-to-end strategy – including near, medium and long-term steps – for the phased, verified, proportionate reduction of all nuclear weapons to zero.

Missile defense objectively assists in anti-proliferation. It reduces the military utility of small nuclear arsenals, hence it removes the incentive to acquire WMDs. It makes waging proxy warfare more difficult since smaller nuclear arsenals cannot convincingly be used to threaten the United States deniably at the behest of larger powers. Hence it enhances both nonproliferation and deterrence, if you believe in either. But Global Zero argues that the mere existence of nuclear weapons now makes their total abolition necessary because of the related risk of “nuclear terrorism”. Yet missile defense plays an important part in countering a world of rogue powers and terrorist forces.

One factor complicating a nuclear terrorist attack is the need for the aggressor to maintain command and control over their weapon at all times. Letting a nuke out of sight of a terrorist leadership cell is the supreme act of faith in the attacking cell. The nuke can be turned against them in a leadership struggle; diverted for sale or used to extort vast amounts of money. Fanatics can seize them to use against another faction.  Much terrorist violence in the world is faction-on-faction. They can even be intercepted and made to blow up in their own faces. Unless used immediately nukes must be secured in a heavily guarded, hard to conceal place. If used immediately they cannot be stockpiled into a decisive amount. Missile delivery systems were ideal solutions to all the problems of command and control problem. That is why North Korea and Iran sought a missile capability immediately. Anti missiles defenses were therefore an immense discouragement against nuclear terrorism in their own right.

The most likely reason for Russia’s objections to US missile defense is not that it degrades their vast and unstoppable arsenal, which remains effective in any case, but it reduces the effectiveness of sock puppet proxies who threaten the US. Russia is not about to threaten the US directly. But wouldn’t it be convenient if others would? And wouldn’t it be even more convenient if the US could not defend against them.

But then, suppose the President believed that nuclear weapons and missile defenses could both be done away with in a “world without nuclear weapons”.  Wouldn’t that be an even better solution? After all, if both deterrence and the need for it are at an end then we go back to a world of pure conventional weapons, like the halcyon days of World War 1 and World War 2 before Hiroshima. The only remain problem would be terrorists because a “world without nuclear weapons” would be slightly meaningless if nobody but Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il had them. That means it is imperative to eliminate all weapons and it’s hard to see how that can be done if Afghanistan is conceded to al-Qaeda as an unchallenged base. General McChrystal warned that Afghanistan could be lost without more troops and Barack Obama is agonizing over whether to send them.

KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan war will be lost unless more troops are sent to pursue a radically revised strategy, the top U.S. and NATO commander said in a confidential assessment that lays out stark choices for President Barack Obama. In the assessment, sent to Washington last month and leaked on Monday, Army General Stanley McChrystal said failure to reverse “insurgent momentum” in the near term risked an outcome where “defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

One of the least emphasized interactions between a forward defense and anti-missile capability is their ability to make actions against a rogue-state nuclear “bootstrap load” credible. Rogue states seek nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them as a way of creating a safe space behind which to arm even further. It is not the first nuke which is so dangerous as much as the succeeding ones that can be built behind them. Like a boostrap loader in a computer, a small, fast-loading piece of code pulls in more libraries behind it until you have vast system staring at you from behind the computer screen. With aspiring rogue states it may be the same. A missile defense preserves the credibility of forward defense because it makes intervention, although unlikely, a feasible operation of war. Without it, any aspiring rogue power can simply acquire one nuke and build away.

If President Obama eventually decides to yield Afghanistan one would think that his strategic choices are stark as well: the alternative to preventing terrorists from obtaining the space to acquire nuclear weapons is to hunker down behind the US deterrent might and missile shield. But it seems exceedingly difficult to square a circle in which missile defenses are eliminated because they undermine deterrence, deterrence is undermined in the name of Global Zero, and anti-proliferation is undermined by ceding space to rogue and terrorist groups. That is the worst of all worlds. What is even more astounding is if all three are pursued in the name of each other. But we live in an age of miracles.