I read through the Nuclear Posture Review a few days ago. Outside of a few grating grammatical errors and the fact that Pentagon writers copy and pasted major portions of the document (seriously, it’s like 25 pages of fresh material in a 70 page document, and even that 25 at least sounds like things I’ve read other places. I get it, we want our nukes to be safe, secure and reliable) it wasn’t a bad document. I would say in terms of rhetoric it points in the right direction. It limits who the US would attack with nukes and takes other stabilizing steps such as demrving ICBMs.
At the same time there are issues that could be brought up. First, since some conservatives are using this to attack Obama for weakening our national security I’d like to address that topic. John Stewart addresses it in a more entertaining fashion than I do.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-april-8-2010-david-remnick
Even dropping down to 1500 or so strategic warheads with the Russians we have 90% of the nukes in the world. (not sure how the treaty counts things, the bit I saw points to this being more complicated than one would think, such as a B-52 counting as one warhead and one launcher, which may or may not make sense. It’s outside my area of expertise) This points to Russia being the only place that could pose an existential threat. To that, the whole point of START treaties and every other nuclear treaty really is for both us and the Russians to draw down in a way that keeps us from thinking the other is engaging in any funny business. The Cold War is not coming back, no matter how much some people might long for those simpler days.
Any other supposed security risk is a chimera created to inspire fear in people who don’t know better. In spite of the current conflicts of the US it still possesses the conventional ability to thwack anyone that does something phenomenally stupid, no nukes necessary. Whether this is a conventional, chemical or biological attack, that ability will not go away. Furthermore, the logistics of chemical and biological attacks preclude them from being weapons of mass destruction. On the same page are either dirty bombs or a stolen detonated nuke. The former would be a local or regional disaster due to contamination. The latter would wipe a city off the face of the earth. While this would most probably spell doom for whatever political party was in power, the world has seen cities wiped out. The US would carry on without New York or Chicago. More nukes would not change this calculus. If anything they make it a more likely eventuality.
On the other side is the contention that our nuclear posture still has bombs on ‘hair trigger alert.’ This phrase skews the reality by making it seem that a launch could happen at any moment. The safeguards make this particular trigger very hard to pull without all the appropriate pieces in place.
I only have three real comments on the NPR myself. The first is that the document is a promise that the US can go back on at any time. It is why Russia is still a global concern; they possess the ability to wipe a nation off the face of the earth. We possess this same potential which others must keep in mind.
The next is that the article does not address Israel, Pakistan or India at all. While the US views these nations differently than Iran and North Korea, they also are not signatories to the Non Proliferation Act. The failure to mention them makes me think that the writers did not want to address those particular issues at all.
Lastly is what this document could do to the mindset of North Korea and Iran. Since these two nations were singled out as definitely being potential targets it could drive them to pursue a greater nuclear potential in order to keep the US from intervening in their affairs. (I mostly mean invade them) I point this out since the single best way to keep us out is to have the ability to inflict a significant amount of damage on us. (IE North Korea’s ability to invade South Korea followed by their ability to nuke somewhere in East Asia versus Iraq)
On a mostly unrelated note, people who keep proclaiming that nuclear proliferation is right around the corner need to calm down. One to two nuclear powers have been added every decade, which is not a rapid accumulation especially considering the number of nations that could possess nukes if they were so inclined. Also necessary to note is the nations that gave up successful programs (South Africa) or programs in progress (Libya).
Tags: NPR, Nuclear Strategy, Proliferation
