Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

One would hope that Obama's team will include your concerns in the speech (in whatever way) and offer alternatives. I.e., the role nuclear weapons have played could, in theory, be filled in some other way. What way, would be interesting to hear...

But I do not think that is likely.

He is an interesting candidate but the term Sophomoric definately applies for me to several of his foreign policy statements. He could use a year at the Army War College to gain some perspective of the world outside that of lawyers and politicians.

I don't particularly agree with Obama's proposal either, but at least he's willing to talk about nuclear weapons and the danger they pose. Unfortunately none of the other candidates Democrat or Republican seem to have any interest in even discussing this issue.

We still have a Cold War nuclear deterrent policy, but mutually assured destruction is hardly applicable to rogue terrorist organizations, or the global Islamic fundamentalist movement and the various insurgencies arising from it, that oftentimes have no direct or clearly definable connection to any nation-state.

So when the nightmare happens, and with each passing decade the likelihood increases, that some band of lunatics will get their hands on a thermonuclear weapon, a tactical size nuke perhaps, something between 300 kt and 5 Mt, and detonates it in a major urban area.

What will we do then? Who will we strike back at?

We need to start thinking about this and coming up with a coordinated global effort to head off such an eventuality.

I'm not quite so sure it's really sophomoric.

I don't think eliminating nuclear weapons is the right thing to do at this point, but I do think we have waaaay more nukes than we need.

Nukes aren't really a deterrent in an asymmetrical warfare world. I don't think the Russians would contemplate WWIII, nor would the Chinese. There are far more effective ways of getting your point across without needing to glow in the aftermath.

Perhaps as an interim step, we detarget and possible remove warheads from land based ICBMs. The sub force can still serve as a highly effective deterrent.

It's quite disingenuous for us to lecture other countries about the not developing nuclear weapons while modernizing our warheads and turning a blind eye towards Israel's nukes.

A few hundred highly accurate nukes will still serve as a highly effective deterrent against a rogue nation. Nukes, however, are not really effective against terrorists.

Don't throw the baby out with the Obama's bathwater.

Ali: right, nukes aren't a deterrent in asymmetrical warfare. but don't throw great power war out with the asymmetrical bathwater. great power war is still the greatest danger we face. not likely at this time and lets keep it that way.

it's not disingenuous at all to modernize our nukes and 'lecture' other countries on not developing them. we are the deterrent (along with a few others). most countries have bought off on this and eschewed the chance to go nuclear. they trust us in the long run to do the right thing.

(Israel, India and Iran are different cases, in some tough neighborhoods. Iran sensibly wants to deter an invasion after we capped both its neighbors. too bad we didn't lock them into a security agreement before we did Afghanistan.)

sure, de-target, reduce the number, etc. stipulated. but the main issue is continuing the expansion of globalization be continuing to stave off great power war, the most effective means of shrinking the Gap, period.