"Two decades later, a who’s who of the national security establishment — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn — is calling on the United States to lead a global campaign to devalue and eventually rid the world of nuclear weapons.
None of these men (two former secretaries of state, a former secretary of defense and a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) are given to casual utopianism — or anything casual. They are trying to shock sensibilities.
In two opinion articles in The Wall Street Journal, they described a frightening new world of ever-expanding nuclear appetites, in which traditional deterrence no longer works. They argued that the only way for the United States to rally the cooperation it needs to confront such dangers is with a clear commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
They called for backing that up with policies that have also long been anathema to hawks: including banning all nuclear testing, taking American and Russian missiles off of hair-trigger alert and agreement on “further substantial reductions” in both countries’ arsenals.
“I do not believe we can do this as a demand by countries that have nuclear weapons to countries that do not,” Mr. Kissinger says. "
The thing is, Anne Applebaum is one of the hawks (albeit in sheep's clothing) mentioned above. So its probably in her interest to "pretend" she doesn't remember that this is a well-thought out idea, with very specific goals and purposes. Not some "strange" idea that comes out of Obama's head. But if she were to inform her readers of that, her argument starts to fall apart, as most hawk's arguments usually do. So you can see why I say, I don't have much trust or faith in Anne Applebaum.
Good quote from Kissinger, Nunn, Perry, etc. I had forgotten about that. I was also struck by how utopian that sounded, coming from those realists.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with complete abolition is that the country (let alone a renegade organization of some kind) with just even one of them becomes the superpower. That's seems unachievable to me, because no country, and certainly not the United States, will ever allow itself to be in that position.
As awful as Mutual Assured Destruction is, it tends to discourage attack, which is the only reason why Russia and the United States have not gone to war over the past 60+ years.
Therefore, non-proliferation is extremely important, as well as getting numbers of weapons by those who have them down as low as possible, without disrupting their sense of security against attack. That may be all that is achievable without some kind of strong world government.