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Nuclear Misinformation By Kingston on 2009-06-30 11:09:01 Yesterday Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Richard Perle published an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal castigating [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623202363966157.html] President Obama for pursuing policies that will purportedly lead to the destruction of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Kyl and Perle trot out the usual right-wing talking points on nuclear weapons: the U.S. nuclear stockpile and its supporting intellectual and physical infrastructure are atrophying; U.S. allies are losing confidence in the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrent; the CTBT is unverifiable, there is no link between great power nuclear reductions and nonproliferation; the proposed missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic is essential to U.S. security; etc. Below is my attempt at a point-by-point rebuttal, with my responses in italics. ... Consider the president's declaration, in a major speech this spring in Prague, of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." Will such a world be peaceful and secure? It is far from self-evident. In the nuclear-free world that ended in 1945 there was neither peace nor security. Since then there have indeed been many wars but none has come close to the carnage that occurred regularly before the development of nuclear weapons, and none has pitted nuclear powers against each other. The claim that nuclear weapons prevent great power war is an oft-heard criticism of the goal of nuclear abolition. The implication here is that in the absence of nuclear weapons, inter-state politics would come to resemble a Hobbesian state of war. Setting aside the questionable validity of this argument, supporters of the goal of nuclear abolition do not argue that abolition would be either feasible or desirable right now, given the current realities of international politics. As George Perkovich and James Acton, co-authors of the Adelphi Paper Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, argue [http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/ext/stair/4_2/acton&perkovich.pdf], eliminating nuclear weapons would require states [to] recognize that their security and prosperity is best served by respecting one another’s core interests. It is a model that emphasizes dialogue and diplomacy. States do not need to eschew the use of force entirely but they do need to refrain from unilateral or unauthorized military interventions. We certainly do not want to downplay the daunting challenge of reshaping international relations in this way. There is complete agreement…that one prerequisite would be to solve (or permanently stabilize) those territorial disputes that stimulate proliferation of nuclear weapons and threats to use them [emphasis mine]. Kyl and Perle have every right to argue that such a world is utopian, but they should at least present the views of those they’re attacking fairly. My response continues below the jump. Read more at http://www.nukesofhazardblog.com/story/2009/6/30/1191/37908

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