Posted on 06/19/2013 10:22:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
On Wednesday, President Obama gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, calling for the United States and Russia to reduce the size of their deployed nuclear arsenals by one-third to around 1,000 strategic warheads. The call for further cuts has been greeted with enthusiasm in many quarters, but these proposed nuclear reductions could potentially be highly damaging to U.S. interests.
In his speech, the president argued that such cuts would be consistent with the goal of maintaining "a strong and credible strategic deterrent," but this argument rests on a contested theory about how nuclear deterrence works. The Obama administration, and many scholars and experts, believe that a secure, second-strike capability is sufficient for deterrence and that anything more is "overkill." Therefore, they believe that nuclear warheads in excess of a "minimum deterrent" threshold can be cut with very little loss to our national security.
However, there are those who argue that maintaining a nuclear advantage over one's opponents enhances deterrence. As Paul Nitze argued during the Cold War, it is of "the utmost importance that the West maintain a sufficient margin of superior capability.... The greater the margin (and the more clearly the Communists understand that we have a margin), the less likely it is that nuclear war will ever occur."
For decades, this debate was largely theoretical -- neither camp marshaled systematic evidence in support of its views -- but, recently, I methodically reviewed the relationship between the size of a country's nuclear arsenal and its ability to achieve its national security objectives. I found strong evidence that, when it comes to nuclear deterrence, more is better.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
That is all that needs to be said.
Dumb question - Can our King unilaterally denuke us?
Back off a notch or two as your enemy stumbles to keep up- but first make damn sure there are really stumbling...
Unilateral disarmament is a fools ploy for peace.
We didn’t work so hard for so long to hand it all away...
FUBO
Communist Goals (1963) Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
# 1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
# 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
# 3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
http://rense.com/general32/americ.htm
I KNEW we’d get there, folks...#s 1, 2 and 3 in the Communist Goals. Crack out the champagne (but, only if YOU made it yourself, because Capitalism sucks, right Barry?)
Send a couple hundred of them to the middle east and convert it into a glass parkinglot!!!
He can drone and nuke us.
This is all part of Barry’s super flexibility strategy that he told Vlad about last year.
“Dumb question - Can our King unilaterally denuke us?”
Here’s my understanding of how this works. The President has absolute power over the military. If the President orders all military bases worldwide to hand their arms over to (fill-in-blank) and surrender to (fill-in-blank) the soldiers would be required to do so. (Yes, that’s absurd.) So, if the President orders the nuclear arsenal torn down and destroyed by Thursday, it would be done.
People would argue that these orders wouldn’t be followed. Perhaps, perhaps not. But remember the orders won’t be as ludicrous as I’ve posited.
There may be a saving grace called the bureaucratic slow- roll. That’s where everybody says, “Yes, Sir!” and then do nothing. They then run out the clock on whoever is giving them ridiculous orders. (But, I wouldn’t count on it, as Obama has had 5 years to put supporters in place.)
At the same time, he will release as much top secret information as he can.
Three more years to go. Three long years.
Very odd notions.
That 1500 nukes somehow means much greater security is just about as odd as the notion that 1000 nukes means a much reduced chance of them being used.
“Zippy has reduced the nuclear arsenal gradually over his presidency.”
The Left was very upset that President Reagan substantially reduced the arsenal. Reagan retired, I want to say 20,000 (couldn’t find the exact no, but if memory serves...) nukes. The Left wanted to do the reduction and it annoyed them to give Reagan credit. But what Reagan did was pull out bombs made for bombers which no longer existed. They were huge by today’s standards and were either lower yield or dirty. These bombs were the equivalent of having a blunderbuss resting beside your M-16.
There was a huge reduction in costs associated with getting rid of these things as we no longer needed the security or storage space. Reagan gave money to the Soviets so they could do the same and we watched as each side tore apart and disposed of its obsolete bombs.
Presumably, this left America with a smaller but very capable nuclear deterrent. It had the added benefit of costing less.
I can't recall the details of exactly how many but that reduced warheads and missiles.
It also had a lot of money to maintain and update the residual arsenal . There is a substantial cost to maintaining these weapons.
Reagan used the term SALT 3 to build upon Nixon and Carter but SALT 3 became START and didn't pass until GHW Bush.
Then the New START was ratified in 2010.
Reagan also wanted a Strategic Defense Initiative. To me, that makes all the difference in the world.
Actually, with Bozo in the WHite Hut we don’t need any nukes. The Commies have won...
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