Devastating though this argument no doubt is, do you really dispute that the USA is, all told, highly unlikely to launch an aggressive nuclear attack on anyone? Can you really say the same thing about all the other nations we’re talking about here? Personally, I’m prepared to put up with a little American hubris in exchange for a world where two nations who are sporadically at war don’t belligerently test doomsday weapons and parade said weapons through their streets. Call me odd, but to me it’s the lesser of two evils.
Yum! Here’s the current funding situation for the project:
Nuke test resumption feared by Senators (April 16, 04)
My understanding is that these weapons, if developed, will not increase our current nuclear stockpile. I remember reading that those future low yield tac nukes will probably be made from the fission bomb ‘fuses’ of old de-commissioned mutli-megaton fusion bombs, the only research really going into delivery systems. Those old style city busting bombs from the height of the cold war used a few very small (low yield) fission bomblets to trigger the fusion explosion to make the really BIG boom. The tritium and other components of the fusion portion of the bomb are approaching their expiration date and it would be expensive to refurbish them. We’re phasing them out anyway, improved accuracy and politics render them obsolete… but we’re left with a problem of what to do with the fissile bombs which have a much longer shelf life so they just want to recycle them back into the arsenal in some way. I personally feel that the fissile material in these weapons is probably safer in our arsenal with it’s safeguards than deactivated and warehoused somewhere under potentially more lax security.
Which is to say that they just want to shift nukes from the steategic to the tactical arsenal.
These bunker busters are a nice idea and all, probably be pretty useful, but lowering the threshold for using nukes by creating new tactical weapons sends a pro-proliferation signal to every regime interested in building their own WMD’s.
Steategic being a technical term for the “big butt” arsenal.
Everyone who checks their spelling uses the more common form: “strategic.”
Here is another good overview.
It is hard to say, at this point, whether building new low-yield (mininuke) weapons would increase our stockpile, but as the Eight Ball says, “Signs point to yes.” Only time can tell, but the main point is that Rumsfeld et al are looking at new kinds of nuclear weapons, which (in my view) is inconsistent with arms reductions.
You do realize India is the largest democratic country on earth don’t you?
But they’re brown and have funny religions. :wally
And your point is? Have you actually ever BEEN to India? Do you have any notion how close it came to a general war between India and Pakastan (the OTHER nuke power on the list) over a piece of wasteland no one in their right mind would want (except India and Pakastan)?
Thanks for the article. 
Knew I’d seen this somewhere before.
Couple of things I half remembered that are in the article (don’t know if the situation has since changed):
If you look at the dollar figures appropriated so far, they are pretty low for testing AND development of a new weapons system…especially a nuke system. I’m not saying this is a good thing (i.e. that the US is trying to develop or even test and experiment with these micro-nukes) but were not at the point of actually procuring these things. It will take years of testing and development…and that means years of administration changes, reverses in direction, and the possibility that the whole thing will be shelved (after costing us millions of dollars of course).
This is kind of disingenuous IMO. The Bush adminstration is looking to test the concept for possible future weapons. Unless someone is going to contend that with this paltry amount of money (relatively speaking) they will be able to design, test, produce and procure weapons of this kind in either a few months (if the gods smile on us) or at most in 4 more years. And they will have to get Senate and Congressional approval before they can in fact start producing said weapons.
Again, I’m not saying this is a GOOD thing (i.e. the fact that the US is now actively even looking at designing and testing another generation of nukes). Personally, I don’t like this development, as I see no good reason for the US to HAVE a micro-nuke bunker buster, when the conventional kind works just fine AFAIK, and it just pushes back the level where nukes are used…something I think should be VERY high.
-XT
[QUOTE=Squink]
Yum! Here’s the current funding situation for the project:
The RNEP? The freaking RNEP? What, did someone fire the Pentagon Acronym Generation Establishment while I wasn’t looking?
In other news, what, precisely, is the assertion which gives rise to the OP here? That Bush failed to reverse the policy of every U.S. administration since nuclear weapons were invented? I think a little more meat is required here if someone wanted to make a good-faith case for that.
Yep.
One of the consequences over the lawsuit by Moab Utah over the MOAB
You mean the only nation to have actually used these weapons against civilian populations in wartime? Twice?
Yes they did and have actually fought three wars. Neither of them got even close to putting their finger on the nuclear trigger! So what are you trying to say?
In fact, the US is the only country to take away the honours for using atomic bombs on civilain populations. If precedence is any indicator, which usually is the case, it is the US that is most likely to use them again.
The US, or any other country for that matter, has no legitimate or moral right to ask another country to disarm while maintaining its owm nuclear status. After looking at the way US has been acting the world’d policeman, it has become all the more important for even the non-nuclear states to develop nuclear weapons. That is the only way to ensure that it will not be attacked by the US. Else who knows, tomorrow if, for whatever reasons, the Pakistani or Indian government falls out of favor with the US admin, the latter might cook up some pretext of WMD and terrorism etc. emanating from those countries and go and attack them!.. and then start abusing their prisoners 