Our Decaying Nuclear Deterrent

A bipartisan congressional commission, headed by some of our most experienced national security practitioners, recently concluded that a nuclear deterrent is essential to our defense for the foreseeable future. It also recommended that urgent measures be taken to keep that deterrent safe and effective.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has adopted an agenda that runs counter to the commission's recommendations.

Consider the president's declaration, in a major speech this spring in Prague, of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." Will such a world be peaceful and secure? It is far from self-evident.

In the nuclear-free world that ended in 1945 there was neither peace nor security. Since then there have indeed been many wars but none has come close to the carnage that occurred regularly before the development of nuclear weapons, and none has pitted nuclear powers against each other.

Consider also that while the administration accepts the urgency of halting the spread of nuclear weapons, the policies it has embraced to reach that goal are likely to make matters worse.

There are good reasons why the test-ban treaty has not been ratified. The attempt to do so in 1999 failed in the Senate, mostly out of concerns about verification -- it simply is not verifiable. ...

There is a fashionable notion that if only we and the Russians reduced our nuclear forces, other nations would reduce their existing arsenals or abandon plans to acquire nuclear weapons altogether. This idea, an article of faith of the "soft power" approach to halting nuclear proliferation, assumes that the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces -- or that India, Pakistan or China would respond with reductions of their own.

This is dangerous, wishful thinking. If we were to approach zero nuclear weapons today, others would almost certainly try even harder to catapult to superpower status by acquiring a bomb or two. A robust American nuclear force is an essential discouragement to nuclear proliferators; a weak or uncertain force just the opposite.

My comments are further quotes from the article; I should have made that more clear!

Even more ridiculous is finding out at the bottom of the article who among our ranks is for the non-proliferation treaty!!

As if the current administration were not dangerous enough, this candy-ass pantywaist approach to our weapons capability needs to be stopped dead in the water. Other than Sen. Kyl at this point, where are the voices on our side?

And, thank you for referencing our Constitution.

Obama is so wrong regarding the nuclear enterprise and his effort to get a new START treaty in before a nuclear posture review is darned silly. From Keith Payne's testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (partial transcript):

“President Obama has announced that the United States will seek, “a new [post-START] agreement by the end of this year that is legally binding and sufficiently bold.” Based on public statements by Russian and U.S. leaders, the basic parameters of an agreement appear to be emerging. I would like to make six short points about the apparent direction of this engagement because some of the early indications are troubling.

First, the discussion of the specific numeric limitations of an agreement should only follow the conclusions of the Nuclear Posture Review just underway at the Pentagon. That review is intended to assess U.S. strategic force requirements. Identifying specific arms control ceilings for agreement prior to its conclusions would be putting the cart before the horse. Our military leaders frequently note that arms control numbers should not drive strategy requirements; rather strategy requirements should drive the numbers. The Obama Administration has assembled a first-rate team in the Pentagon with responsibility to conduct the current Nuclear Posture Review. I have considerable personal experience in conducting a Nuclear Posture Review; my hope is that before specific arms control numbers are set this team will be allowed to complete the time consuming and complex set of analyses necessary to reach even preliminary conclusions about the force requirements of strategy and how to meet those requirements. This would be in keeping with having our strategy drive numbers, and not allowing arms control numbers to drive strategy.

Second, the Russian and U.S. sides have agreed that the post-START treaty will not reduce only the number of nuclear warheads; it will include reductions in the number of strategic force launchers, i.e., the number of deployed ICBM, SLBMs, and strategic bombers. Russian President Medvedev has said that Russia would like the number of these strategic launchers to be reduced several times below the 1600 launchers permitted now under START. We should be very careful about moving toward low launcher numbers because it would provide significant advantages for the Russian Federation, but significant disadvantages for U.S. strategy. It is a smart position for Russia, but bad for us.

Why so? Because Russian strategic systems have not been designed for long service lives and the number of deployed Russian strategic ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers will drop dramatically with or without a new arms control agreement.”

Thanks for posting this article. I hope Americans wake up before it is too late.

We live near a base that has long been rumored to have strategic missiles and ever since Obama came into office, we don’t hear them testing the ballistic firing ‘thingamagigs’ anymore. We use to hear the roar at least once or twice a month. Not anymore. Now I am not sure that’s what we have been hearing all of these years, but it’s not jet engines because they sound different. This is like something you would hear at a shuttle launch. I am sure some freepers would know more about it but we don’t see the jets flying much either..nor the roars of the other stuff. During Bush’s term they were flying regularly and testing something big on a regular basis.

Pray for our country!

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