http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090405/ap_on_re_eu/eu_obama
This is a bold policy change that seems to have yet received little press. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
I think nuclear weapons have generally been a very stabilizing force on the world. While the threat of a catastrophic war loomed, the actual instances of war were reduced. The last 60 years have been a pretty peaceful time. You can’t necesarily credit nuclear weapons solely with this - cultural changes and the great advances in the sharing of information certainly had an impact, along with other factors.
But in principle, I find the idea of the reduction of nuclear threats to any country to be destabilizing. I’m generally skeptical of the general purpose of arms reduction treaties (though specific types of prohibitions can be useful) and the development of any sort of missile defense system for that reason.
The prospect of nuclear war, even in the height of the cold war, was not as destructive as believed in popular culture. It wouldn’t “end the world”, claims that we had enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on earth 7 times over were bullshit. Neither the West nor the Soviet bloc viewed even an all out nuclear war as an unrecoverable loss - they viewed it as the opening salvo of a greater war.
Technological and strategic developments sometimes made the idea of a first strike appealing. Both sides (especially the Soviets) were convinced the other was looking for an opportunity to make a first strike. Medium range ballistic missiles and submarine launched ballistic missiles offered the opportunity to destroy or suppress an enemy’s counterstrike capability without warning time for anything near full retaliation.
If either side developed an effective missile defense shield, it would either itself be emboldened to consider a first strike - but probably more importantly, the other side would’ve seen a viable ballistic missile shield being constructed and considered that it should attack now, before the system was operational, because it might be their last chance to strike as the shielded side might now feel empowered to strike themselves.
So the development of reliable, redundant, widespread, and varied methods of delivering nuclear weapons made war less likely. The biggest disincentive for a first strike was the prospect of there being sufficient avenues of retaliation that the initial attacker didn’t have a reasonable chance of preventing a substantial counterstrike.
So from there, a reduction in nuclear arms actually makes a nuclear conflict more likely. The fewer weapons, the fewer delivery systems, the greater chance of destroying or disabling them a first striker would have, and the more likely they’d be able to withstand what was left of the counterstrike.
A world with a dozen nuclear weapons is in many ways more dangerous than a world with ten thousand.
But that’s cold war era logic - two large factions with a lot to lose and reasonably sane governments. We’re in a world now where many factions have limited nuclear capability, and some of the craziest places on earth are probably within reach.
But does the US have to give up its own capabilities in order to influence others to do the same? I think the world can agree it’s reasonable to attempt to keep Iran or North Korea from becoming a nuclear power and we don’t need to lead by example by disarming ourselves.
Certainly the security of nuclear materials in some parts of the world is a concern, but the US, as far as I know, still is locked down tight. We could save money and simplify readiness by reducing our nuclear forces while still maintaining a sufficient strike or counterstrike capability against lesser powers than the Soviet Union. But this is talk about complete disarmament, and I’m not sure I’m seeing the benefit.
It strikes me as unlikely that we’d get established but minor powers like China, Pakistan, and India to disarm. We can attempt to prevent other powers from reaching nuclear status without disarming ourselves.
We could plausibly get the former Soviet countries to reduce their arms even further, and security issues for their stockpile would ease, but it doesn’t strike me as the target of this proposal.
So I’m going to open this taking the position that it’s a bad idea. I would like to persue policies that will reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, including reduced implementation (and possibly) cancellation of the ballistic missile defense shield (it encourages China and Russia to develop more warheads and more capable missiles to maintain a credible threat), stronger attempts to curtail Iran and North Korea, and greater assistance to Russia to maintain security of their nuclear materials. But disarming ourselves seems to have little benefit.