REBUTTAL TO THE ARTICLE, ‘OBAMA PRESSES REVIEW OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY’

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 9 Jan 2010

Joseph Gerson – American Friends Service Committee

The Boston Globe ran a major article in yesterday’s [3 Jan 2009] Sunday paper under the title "Obama presses review of nuclear strategy." It focuses more on the possible removal of the bomber leg of the nuclear "triad" and possible reductions in land based ICBMs. As the following letter to the editor indicates, I thought the article had a lot of problems, but it does reflect where much of the media and popular discourse will be in the coming months.

Dear Editor,

            Brian Bender’s article “Obama presses review of nuclear strategy” contains misstatements of fact, makes no reference to essential context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and misses the focus on the Nuclear Posture Review debate: “modernization” and “no first use.”

            Bender mistakenly claims that current treaty negotiations with Russia would reduce the number of each side’s warheads to between 1,500 and 2,200, and that Obama may recommend cutting the U.S. arsenal to 1,000. The negotiations are about deployed strategic nuclear warheads, not the hundreds of deployed tactical nuclear weapons, most of which are more destructive than the Hiroshima A- Bomb. More, the negotiations and proposals do not address the roughly 16,000 nuclear warheads in the superpowers’ stockpiles.

            The article reports that bombers can “use nuclear weapons to help defuse a possible crisis.” In fact, since the A-bombing of Nagasaki, on more than 40 occassions U.S. presidents have prepared or threatened to initiate nuclear war. These threats, and the refusal of the nuclear powers to fulfill their NPT Article VI obligation to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals are driving nuclear weapons proliferation. Recognizing this danger, George Shultz,  Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama and others have urged the U.S. to reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and to reaffirm its Article VI commitment.

            These disarmament steps, including the negotiations with Russia that will leave the two powers with more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, are seen as essential if the U.S. is to regain necessary diplomatic leverage needed to use this May’s NPT Review Conference to prevent break outs by Iran and other near-nuclear nations.

            If Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review reiterates a first-strike policy or if he and Congress authorize “modernization” – production –  of new genocidal nuclear weapons, the obvious hypocrisy will jeopardize the NPT and vastly increase the nuclear dangers.

            Finally, why is Moscow not talking about abolition? Because, as Mikhail Gorbachev warned, with U.S. high-tech weapons and its campaign to monopolize the militarization of space, Russian leaders believe they need a deterrent force to prevent repetitions of U.S. Cold War nuclear blackmail.

            President Obama has stated his commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. It’s time to walk that talk.

_________________________

Dr. Joseph Gerson:

Disarmament Coordinator – American Friends Service Committee.

Author, Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 9 Jan 2010.

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