U.S. Nuclear Policy: Cause For Applause or Alarm?

President Obama is obtaining Kudo’s for his nuclear initiative with Russia. My instinct was to applaud, but sometimes it pays to keep thinking. Sure enough, some NYTimes letters-to-the-editors make one stop and think, especially when presumed Democrats (the majority of Time’s readers) turn skeptical. In the 4/8/10 Times, one letter (from A. Weitzner) pointed out that “to think that rogue nations like Iran and North Korea will be inspired by our responsible efforts to reduce our nuclear fingerprint to stop their own nuclear ambitions is dangerous, naïve, magical thinking.”

Another noted that the president hedged his comments with regard to countries like North Korea and Iran (called “outliers”). E.Lipps  continued, “other nations are sure to interpret this as meaning that in practice little will change: the president will retain the right to use nuclear weapons when, in his opinion, it’s necessary…”.
 

A third agreed, but this time Kaveh Afrasiabi, who was an advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiations team 2004-5, pointed out that “instead of rebuilding the nonproliferation regime, the doctrine’s explicit nuclear bullying of proliferation-prone countries actually increases their insecurity and perceived need for nuclear deterrence, thus achieving the opposite results of its intended purposes”.

Even coming from Iran, that sounds right-on to me, and reminds me of Obama’s Afghanistan decision which blew my mind, as it did many other Dems. It might be boring to address that decision this late in the game, but I think I’ll do so soon. Knowing only what I read and interpret from various non-partisan sources, the Afghanistan decision was much worse than the Nuclear pact, for so many reasons.