News from the UN: Obama Rejects Pentagon Hawks on Nuclear Weapons Policy
In today's speech to the UN General Assembly, President Barack Obama underscored his commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. The speech reiterated the steps his administration has taken or promised to take since his historic April speech in Prague, from pursuing mutual nuclear arms reductions with Russia to pressing for a global agreement banning all nuclear testing to commencing negotiations on ending all production of nuclear bomb-making materials. But perhaps the most newsworthy and important element of the address was his commitment to "complete a Nuclear Posture Review that opens the door to deeper cuts, and reduces the role of nuclear weapons." This means that the president intends to push back against the the clique of nuclear neanderthals in the Pentagon who would like nothing better than to tie his hands by churning out a business-as-usual statement of policy on nuclear weapons.
This encouraging rhetoric needs to be followed up with urgent action. This should include pursuing the deepest possible cuts in U.S.and Russian arsenals. Current talks are aiming at the 1,500 to 1,650 deployed warheads on each side; a second round of talks should push total stockpiles down into the hundreds, levels at which other nations may feel obliged to join the move towards deep cuts in these weapons of mass terror.
In a prior post I exaggerated the commitment to deep reductions embodied in the draft resolution that the U.S. will bring to the Security Council tomorrow. I referred to a commitment to"make quick, deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the "Big Five" (the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the UK." There is no such commitmen in the resolution, as my colleague John Burroughs of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy quickly pointed out to me. The operative section calls upon UN member states to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures related to nuclear arms reduction and disarmament." This leaves far too much wiggle room as to whenthe major nuclear weapons states need to disarm, if at all (note "effective measures related to nuclear arms reduction and disarmament," as opposed to say, a commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons within a certain time frame, as proposed by former Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. Nabil Fahmy in a recent essay in the Huffington Post.).
There is far to go, but Obama's willingness to push the Pentagon in the right direction could be a sign of good things to come.
I really, really hate to say or even think this but even though our nuclear arsenal serves no realistic MILITARY purpose it may, in a perverse manor serve an economic one.
One of the few reasons the US can borrow so much from other countries, in addition to the dollar being the world's dominant reserve currency, is our global military reach, both conventional and nuclear.
Maintaining conventional military global reach is very costly and depends to a fair degree on population size. By comparison,....well, you get the picture.
Again, I stress, this is not my druthers, but post cold war, for one reason(corporate interest) or another, the US and 'the West' abandoned any attempt to democratize through economic levers, leaving only the military option. We made our own bed.
September 23, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
A reasonable point, but global military reach depends more on conventional forces than nuclear. In any case, I don't think halving our nuclear arsenal will have any appreciable effect.
September 23, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's part of my point conventional global reach gets expensive. Esp. in a future when we're competing with a nation or two with more than 1.3 billion people.
September 23, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gosh, do you suppose the US might be trying to observe a treaty it entered into forty years ago?
TREATY ON THE NON-PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Signed at Washington, London, and Moscow July 1, 1968
Ratification advised by U.S. Senate March 13, 1969
Ratified by U.S. President November 24, 1969
U.S. ratification deposited at Washington, London, and Moscow March 5, 1970
Proclaimed by U.S. President March 5, 1970
Entered into force March 5, 1970
Article VI: Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/text/npt2.htm
September 23, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
How Obama defends accountability and the integrity of international law.
September 23, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apologies.
This was posted into this thread by mistake.
September 23, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
NO SERIOUS DISCUSSION can take place on nuclear arms reduction and non proliferation until full exposure takes place of the massive, secret ISRAELI nuclear arms arsenal in the Negev desert, that is currently completely outside of IAEA inspection.
To do so and ignore this 'giant elephant in the room', would simply be nonsensical.
It would lead to a situation whereby not only US foreign policy lies with the Israeli lobby but also global military and political control.
Such a decision would be indefensible.
September 24, 2009 4:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Watching Queen Noor of Jordan on MSNBC last night helped me understand how serious some of our world leaders are about nuclear proliferation.
Obama's been on-course since day 1 to address this impending issue.
The thought that there are people seeking TOTAL elimination of nuclear weapons is encouraging to anyone who remembers the duck-and-cover classroom exercises of the 60's.
But never has there been a tougher goal to accomplish, in the history of human development. The special interests that profit from war, that military-industrial-congressional complex Eisenhower warned about, has proven it will do anything to protect the profane profits of it's Daddy Warbuck membership, even as it hypocritically claims to protect the hopeful dream our founding fathers built our nation upon.
We can only hope cooler, humanitarian heads prevail over the abject greed and pride and prejudice that is at the very core of nuclear proliferation.
It is an issue worthy of our energy, our activism, our meditation and our prayers.
Every day.
September 24, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks so much for posting this -- it inspired me to revisit the last episode of Carl Sagan's COSMOS, entitled, "Who Speaks for the Earth?" Remember?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQq1dMdYxHs
Sagan's COSMOS really puts things in perspective, especially when you consider that the primary challenge now for the human race is to choose life and to refuse death by nuclear winter or warming.
And what is Afganistan (can never spell that country name) all about, really, but to find and to prevent a nuclear attack, ANY nuclear Attack? Of course, this requires a specific, laser-like Police action over general warfare -- prevention of nuclear winter is really the point of being there at all in the larger cosmic and global perspective. We are all citizens of only one planet. This is Terra, home for all. We can't continue to risk general and random wars. We need to act smart.
It's not as if the Hawks are not affected by this, it seems they just forgot. And the oil companies with their pipelines to China and their strange bedfellows -- the growing crop of opium pushers, seem to have conveniently forgotten they are not immune while the discharge of random tons of fire and weaponry continues to contribute to warming.
So much comes down to this key challenge, all the way down to the Eric Holder investigations into torture that are so conveniently being denied by the self-interested.
Please remember people -- CHOOSE LIFE!
The people of Prague get it.
September 26, 2009 4:55 AM | Reply | Permalink