Obama Moves to Gut Our Nuke Arsenal
Ronald Reagan famously said that the United States and the Soviet Union didn’t fear each other because they had nuclear weapons; they had nuclear weapons because they feared each other. This insight served as the basis for the Reagan administration’s rearming of America, both conventional and nuclear, and consequent victory in the Cold War.
The Obama administration, not surprisingly, has set out to reverse this winning policy and to begin dismantling America’s nuclear deterrent. This because the president and the far left pine for a world free of nuclear weapons.
“The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” Obama insisted in his April 5, 2009 Prague speech. “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Actually, the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is not the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War; the rise of radical Islam is. Witness Iran, Afghanistan, and the proliferation of Wahhabi mosques and madrassas throughout Saudi Arabia and indeed, much of the Muslim world.
But while facts may be stubborn things for empirical-based thinkers like Reagan and the neoconservatives, they are of little use to the mushy-headed Left, which stubbornly clings to the ludicrous notion that military arms -- and particularly nuclear weapons -- are an inherent source of instability and danger.
In fact, as the Lexington Institute’s Dan Goure and other American strategists point out, the United States isn’t bothered at all by the fact that Great Britain, France, and even India have nuclear weapons. That’s because we know that none of these countries threaten us or our national security interests.
So quite clearly the problem isn’t nuclear weapons per se; it is the nature and disposition of the governments or political factions that have access to or control nuclear weapons. In short, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has it right: Guns don’t kill; people do -- and the corollary of this rule is that dictators, tyrants and despots kill on a dramatic, large, and threatening scale.
But instead of focusing its efforts on how to effect peaceful regime change in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and elsewhere, the Obama administration is busy chasing after the chimera -- the genuinely dangerous chimera -- of a “world without nuclear weapons.”
A world without nuclear weapons is a dangerous chimera for two reasons. First, the United States requires nuclear weapons to deter both conventional and nuclear war. Second, America’s enemies -- in Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing, Caracas, and elsewhere -- likely will interpret unilateral American nuclear concessions as a sign of weakness and irresolution. This, in turn, could lead to the type of strategic miscalculations that, throughout history, have often led to war.
For example, Goure notes, we really don’t know for sure why the Chinese haven’t yet tried to annex Taiwan. It may be, he says, that the Chinese dictators fear a retaliatory American nuclear strike. Certainly, the fact that America has that capability -- and may, in fact, use it -- has helped to keep the peace over Taiwan.
Yet, the New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration is about to unveil a new nuclear strategy which will seriously deprecate the role and importance of nuclear weapons.
Among the changes from the previous Bush administration: dramatic and unilateral reductions in America’s nuclear stockpile; a ban on any new nuclear weapons, including low-yield, deeply-burrowing warheads which might be used to destroy hidden nuclear facilities in Iran or North Korea; and a possible declaration that the “sole purpose” of America’s nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attack.
As for this possible declaration, the Times reports: “‘We’re under considerable pressure on this one within our own party,’” one of Mr. Obama’s national security advisers said recently.” Among those exerting this pressure: the Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.
Of course, the New York Times completely supports the Obama administration’s efforts to disarm America. After all, for many years now, the Times has been waging an editorial jihad to emasculate the defense budget; indeed, it has never met a weapons system that it didn’t want to cut or eliminate.
Unfortunately, the Times has not only the Democrats on its side, but too often the Republicans as well. Senator McCain, remember, was instrumental in giving Obama political cover last year to enact some of the most draconian and ill-advised cuts in the defense budget since Jimmy Carter was president.
These cuts included elimination of the Transformational Satellite program, as well as elimination of eight new Army combat vehicle types, all of which were integral to modernizing U.S. military capabilities for 21st Century irregular warfare.
Now that he is running for re-election and faces a potentially difficult primary challenge from former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, McCain is singing a different tune. He now expresses skepticism and concern over Obama administration disarmament initiatives.
McCain’s election year flip-flop is welcomed and helpful. But it would be more helpful if McCain were a principled defense hawk and not the summertime soldier he more typically is.
It also would be helpful if more Republicans spoke out well and often about the Obama administration’s gutting of the defense budget. But the sad and lamentable truth is that when it comes to neglecting the nation’s defenses, the GOP really doesn’t have much of an advantage, if any, over the Democrats.