Knuckleheaded On Nukes

If you think I mean that our President is a knucklehead about strategic weapons policy, you're right; but I do not mean just President Obama. Several Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter as I recall, have expressed a desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. We are about as likely to revive the Pony Express.

The possibility that rogue states may have such weapons or may be about to acquire them is not something that will go away. Non-proliferation policies show no promise. The only real deterrent to small state nukes is the threat of massive retaliation. International security depends on large stockpiles in the hands of the United States. To imagine the elimination of such weapons in any foreseeable time frame is knuckleheaded.

President Obama's change in strategic weapons doctrine is typical Obama foreign policy talk. Either it is largely meaningless, or it's bad. Mary Beth Sheridan in the WaPo:

Obama's nuclear policy breaks with the past by narrowing the circumstances under which the U.S. government says it will use the devastating weapons. But on one point after another, the changes are gradual rather than transformational…

The new document is less ambiguous about the purposes of nuclear weapons than in the past, saying their "fundamental role" is to deter a nuclear attack. But it shies away from declaring that their "sole purpose" is deterrence, as some Democratic lawmakers and arms-control activists had wanted. That leaves open the possibility that the weapons can be used in some other scenarios, such as in response to a conventional attack.

That's the largely meaningless part. Presidents are largely constrained in the policy decisions by such realities of international relations as I mention above. The Administration can't bring itself to say much that is different from past administrations. But then there is this part:

Unlike the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Obama team says it would not authorize a nuclear strike against a non-nuclear country in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack.

But it attaches important caveats: The non-nuclear country must be in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations under international treaties, which leaves Iran on the list of potential targets.

I suppose this part of the new policy, the closest thing to meaningful language in it, is intended to encourage Iran and North Korea to get with the program. Good luck with that.

But for Heaven's sake, is the President really going to going to call in a team of international lawyers to tell him whether or how he can respond after some rogue state has attacked the U.S. with chemical or biological weapons?

Do we really want to say to our enemies: as long as you abide by the said treaties, and confine yourself to a certain category of weapons of mass destruction, you don't have to fear our nuclear arsenal? That's nuts, and our enemies would be nuts to count on it. It's a good thing that rogue state leaders are not usually nuts in that way.

Typically, and fortunately in this case, the Administration doesn't mean a word of what it is saying.

The U.S. government reserves the right to change its mind if biological weapons become more powerful.

Exactly how powerful do the weapons need to be? I am guessing that the lawyers won't be in charge of that decision.

Here is the gem in the WaPo article:

Peter D. Feaver, a former defense and strategy official in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote on ForeignPolicy.com that the new document is not "the bold leap that wins plaudits in academic seminar rooms, activist think-tanks and Norwegian parliaments."

Rather, he wrote, it reflects the kind of pragmatism Obama has shown in foreign policy decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan: "Critics may complain that this results in a lack of strategic clarity . . . but perhaps it will come to be seen as a politically deft balance of competing desiderata."

A "politically deft balance of competing desiderata." I couldn't have put it worse, or more accurately, myself. Let me unpack that for you. It means a gob of irreconcilable bits of wishful thinking, amounting to utter nonsense.

Someone should tell the President that the Norwegians can't take back his peace prize, so he doesn't have to keep not doing anything meaningful to deserve it.

Comments

[GeneK]

It seems to me that the substance of the debate on this issue hasn't changed in 50 years. But the world and technology have changed--just as aircraft doomed the battleship so have precision weapons replaced the nuke. This policy change is just so much noise and grandstanding.