Events subsequent to the Senate lame-duck vote on the New START Treaty only serve to reinforce concerns given short shrift at the time – notably, with respect to the inadvisability of cutting and otherwise allowing the further atrophying of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, at a time when every other nuclear power, including Russia, is modernizing its arsenal.
the President will use the pretext of now-pending budget cuts to advance his agenda of “ridding the world of nuclear weapons” by exemplary American action.”
Considering the ‘exemplary’ action the American led NATO is concluding in Libya, every tin-pot dictatorship on the planet wants to get their hands on nuclear weapons, or at least chemical/bio weapons, now.
America shedding it’s nuclear deterent will also encourage saner western type democracies to acquire their own nukes to fill the strategic gap Obama is creating.
Japan, with it’s proximity to North Korea, comes immediately to mind.
Russia could better spend its resources in combating alcoholism, its rapidly declining population, the rampant corruption and its soft eastern Chinese and southern Islamic underbelly, rather than on nuclear power aimed at the declining US.
Obama is just paving the way for an eventual islamic takeover of America.
Europe is already dead & gone. America soon to follow the path into a new dark age via Sharia. Obama has made this his mission. He can deny it but the last 3 years , you would have to be blind not to see it. Africa has been turned into a series of slave States with his blessing if not arms. Even Canada has been drafted into this madness of helping those who would kill us all into this insane road.
How else are you going to disarm the U.S.?
Oz, as we do not know when and how North Korea will disintegrate, Japan’s acquisition of nuclear arms is imperative. It’s bad enough that the US be a lame duck in the six-party talks and STILL deal with China but for it to be lax in its nuclear policies spells BIG trouble.
If the Americans do not come to their senses and vote him out of office in 2012 by 2016 the US will cease to be a major player on the world stage, their economy will be in ruins, the military will be decimated and their reputation will be non-existent.
Maybe the Obama administration should crack open a history book and look at what’s happened to every other society in history that has disarmed itself. They could start with Carthage circa the Third Punic War.
If that doesn’t deter them, maybe they should read up on what happened to Carthage’s diplomats and ambassadors after they surrendered their weapons to Rome. Let’s just say… the people disapproved. With prejudice.
Meh America’s oversized nuclear arsenal costs way too much. It should be shrunken unilaterally. There is no threat from other relatively sane countries like China updating their nuclear arsenals.
Russia points its nukes at the US. As Ken says they should be worrying about China and the Islamofascists. The war to watch is the one where China occupies Asiatic Russia.
The US works hard at destroying its economy by regulating business out of business. Its military is weak, it has no space program, and increasingly less pride. It needs a serious kick in the a$$. An election can’t come too soon.
Osumashi Kinyobe 6:53 PM,
I agree.
My position is that nuclear disarmament will never happen.
The very idea is a Leftist wet dream harking back to the pre-Reagan years.
Most have heard the saying “In the land of the blind, the man with one-eye is King.”
In a nuclear dis-armed world, the nation that reneges on disarmament and keeps just one nuke can rule the rest just with the threat of using it.
The knowledge of this fact is why some nations have more than they need to survive a first and even second strike on their existing nuclear stockpiles.
Beyond that, who would think that the Obamanation would respond to a strike from another nuclear power and risk L.A. or NYC in a retaliatory strike if some rogue regime used a nuke to strike Toronto or Calgary or Bern or Brussels?
All responsible regimes would be best to follow the policy that France has always had, to acquire nuclear weapons and then to reserve the right to use them for their own interests alone.
France, by the way, has never done anything to even suggest they will ever take part in a nuclear disarmament treaty of any kind and likely never will.
They would quit NATO in a heartbeat.
“There is no threat from other relatively sane countries like China updating their nuclear arsenals.”
Now THAT is funny.