Nuclear Unilateral Disarmament Agreement

[Gaspar]

Sounds positive on the surface, but under the hood it's just more campaigning.  He's been claiming a "30% reduction in nuclear arms."  Now that sounds significant!  But the changes in the treaty simply alter the counting.  Rather than counting warheads, they will be counting delivery mechanisms, so without lifting a finger our arsenal is magically reduced.  Rather than counting the 20 warheads on an aircraft, we simply count the aircraft.  20 nuclear weapons are converted to one.  Missiles that deploy multiple warheads to multiple targets now become a single nuclear weapon.

Pavel Podvig, a physicist at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, says almost all of the advertised cuts "will be accomplished by changing the way warheads are counted." It's like saying I'm going to lose 20 pounds, with each actual pound counting as 10.

In practice, reports the Federation of American Scientists, the United States will have to get rid of just 100 warheads, while the Russians will scrap 190. It's not disarmament, and it's not unilateral.

It's simply a notch on the campaign belt for both leaders "I reduced the nuclear arsenal by 30%" and again the dumb-masses will cheer and faint.

It's a tiny step and should be treated as such.

[we vs us]

Cite?

[Conan71]

Cite?

Is your Googler broken? 

[Gaspar]

http://tvilletimes.com/view/full_story/6949757/article-Obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98unilateral-disarmament%E2%80%99-?instance=latest_articles

[Townsend]

Oh man, he's pals with Beck and Coulter.

[Gaspar]

Oh man, he's pals with Beck and Coulter.

May your chains rest lightly upon you.

[custosnox]

Oh man, he's pals with Beck and Coulter.

A Beckanite from the land of Beckastan?

[Townsend]

I forgot to add "bleck and pluh"

[we vs us]

Congratulations, Gaspar, for choosing a nonpartisan op-ed!  Steve Chapman writes for the Chicago Tribune and is (IMO) an emminently sensible opinionator.  Thanks for contributing something we can all nosh on intelligently!

That said:

If the cuts turn out to be less than advertised (as Chapman says) then I'll be disappointed as well.  But being able to advance the idea of cutting our nuclear deterrent deserves some credit, as does his ability to get the Russians to join us (which O's already done).  

Chapman says as much:

"The main value of the treaty is that it obligates both governments to inform the other of how many weapons it has and where they are located, while imposing verification requirements to keep them honest.

It also opens the possibility of deeper cuts. Those make sense because neither side needs such a huge stockpile or the expense that comes with it — and because the more weapons, the greater the risk of a disastrous accident."  

[nathanm]

Far more important than the cuts in warheads are the changes in policy. Like "no, we won't nuke you unless you use a nuke."

Besides, delivery mechanisms are more important than the warheads themselves. Without a way to deliver it, all you can do is blow yourself up.

I would be all for unilaterally decommissioning the vast majority of our land-based nuclear missiles and nuclear gravity bombs. We don't need them to deter nuclear attack. All we need for that are a few submarines with reasonably sized stocks of warheads.

That said, I think we ought to keep the pits around, as Russia and China aren't exactly friendly these days, only "not likely to try and blow us up soon."

[custosnox]

Besides, delivery mechanisms are more important than the warheads themselves. Without a way to deliver it, all you can do is blow yourself up.

Rental vehicles seem to make a pretty good delivery system.  It may not be as high tech as the Missles that we use, but it works.  Not all attacks come from the air.

[nathanm]

Rental vehicles seem to make a pretty good delivery system.  It may not be as high tech as the Missles that we use, but it works.  Not all attacks come from the air.

Sure, but all our attacks come from the air. (I guess if the davy crockett hasn't been decomissioned, we could use a cannon)

For a nation, delivery is everything. For a non-state actor, not so much since they can more readily improvise. It's a good thing it's so hard to enrich uranium sufficiently to build a nuke. It's better that it's even harder to produce a proper implosion to make a plutonium device work. Even more handy, it's really, really hard to make small ones that fit on small missiles of the sort a terrorist organization is likely to be able to acquire.

It would be relatively easy to spot someone bringing something the size of little boy or fat man into the country. Making them smaller is difficult at best.

[custosnox]

It would be relatively easy to spot someone bringing something the size of little boy or fat man into the country. Making them smaller is difficult at best.

You would think it would be harder, except the many families that have been smuggled in would make a differant case of the matter.   So would the no telling how many tons of drugs.  I won't argue that we need the number of nukes that we have, and only need those just to say "we will use em if you use yours".  I'm just pointing out that while the lack of a conventional delivery system does not mean that a threat does not exist. 

[nathanm]

I'm just pointing out that while the lack of a conventional delivery system does not mean that a threat does not exist. 

There is certainly a threat, but it's a manageable one due to the many different layers of defense that can be applied.

That, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the NPR and reducing our stockpile, which is utterly useless against the sort of threats you seem to be concerned about. Well, useless unless we nuke the entirety of the Mexican border and make it impassable without shortly dying of radiation poisoning.

[JeffM]

Sorry to interrupt another lunatic conspiracy thread started by Gas, this time about Obama wanting to disarm the country....

Let's keep in mind that Obama didn't choose to have a dem as his mentor on foreign policy.....

Obama, Lugar Secure Funding for Implementation of Nonproliferation Law
Thursday, June 28, 2007
http://lugar.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=278019

Statement by Sen. Lugar on START
Friday, March 26, 2010
http://lugar.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=323470&&

Lugar calls for swift ratification of START
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0310/Lugar_calls_for_swift_ratification_of_START.html

"It is my fervent goal and hope...that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth."
Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

Let's see, we get a Mitt Romney healthcare plan and a Dick Lugar nuclear weapons policy....
Go figure.