Deutch - A Nuclear Posture for Today
Sunday, November 25, 2007
4:34 PM
2005 Foreign Affairs
256, The threats of the Cold War on longer exist. What
threatens now is the risk of rogue nations or groups getting
their hands on WMDs. The US must cut back on its Nuclear
arsenal enough to deter but still encourage nonproliferation.
Weapons also serve to protect other nations which depend on
US arsenals of WMDs.
258, Double standard with regard to goal of complete
disarmament. The US prompts others to not have nuclear
weapons while keeping its own stockpile.
259, The US nuclear arsenal must serve two purposes: deter an
attack on the US or allies and fight back including against
chemical/bio weapons and ensure that a nation understands
that if it strikes, the retaliation will result in complete
annihilation.
Govt 135 Page 1
260, The US should have enough weapons to
respond to China or Russia if it again became a
threat. The US ought to reduce in accord with the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
The Us ought to release its numbers of weapons
as a means of deterrence, and security for its
allies.
262, The competence of the Nuclear scientists has
been called into question as the original
developers have since retired and computer
simulations of Nuclear blasts have not been
confirmed with live tests.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not been
ratified by the US or India, Iran, Israel, N. Korea
and Pakistan. Critics of the Treaty say that just
because tests are done doesn't mean anything to
the actual threat of a nation using them. The
ability to run tests is a check to make sure the
weapons are in good condition, if not they cannot
serve as deterrents.
The fissile material control treaty has been thrown
around to make sure no country makes any more
material that could be used to make a bomb. This
treaty would make it easy to stigmatize non-
signers as proliferators and use international
pressure.
266, "strategic ambiguity" is the refusal to rule
out Nuclear response to bio/chem. weapons, this
stance harms the non-proliferation stance
therefore making no-first use unclear.
De-alerting, which is increasing time between
decision to launch and launch to prevent
accidental attacks may be an aid, but it is more
often impractical logistically.
267, In summary, US nuclear force must be
strong enough to deter and survive attacks and
face the transformed nuclear threat.