I Hope That Treaty Is Thick and Made of Lead. It’s Going to Need to Protect Us From A Lot

I really wanted to take the story of how the President mucked with our nuclear weapon policy and turn it into a funny and smarky blog post about how the President obviously never played a strategy board game in his life, but I just couldn’t. The President is dangerously naive and we’re less secure right now because of it.

Later today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will present the Obama administration’s “Nuclear Policy Review,” which makes significant changes to the position of the US government regarding nuclear weapons, shifting the emphasis to preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

In the Review, the US government will pledge to refrain from using nuclear weapons to attack any country in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)  — even if that country has attacked the US with chemical or biological weapons.

“This is part of our effort to continue to incentivize nations to comply with the NPT, and to isolate those who don’t,” a senior administration official told ABC News. Nuclear states and those nations such as Iran and North Korea that are non-compliant with the NPT “get no assurance at all.”

Here’s how the White House reasoning works: nations will want to sign the NPT to get our promise that we won’t nuke them, even if they attack us with weapons forbidden by other treaties. Am I the only one who sees the gaping flaw in the President’s logic? Steve Green sees it very clearly.

Little countries can now act, with chemical or biological agents, sure in the knowledge that however we respond, we will respond with less. The other guy now gets to determine how much punishment he is willing to take. Before yesterday, we determined how much punishment we were willing to dish out (plenty).

President Johnson (and to a lesser extent, Nixon) made the sam mistake in dealing with North Vietnam. “Escalation,” tit-for-tat, let Hanoi dictate the pace of the war, while simultaneously learning how to deal with, and obviate, our military might. Result: We lost the initiative and eventually the war. Sucky, that.

As of today, the little guys just got a bit bigger. They can hit us with the worst they’ve got, safe in the knowledge that the full weight of our might will never come down on them. (Note: This is not to advocate the use of nuclear weapons. But by publicly keeping our options open, the odds of us ever having to use those terrible things is reduced.)

Heck, I’ll advocate the use of nuclear weapons. There is no doubt in my mind that Harry Truman saved millions of lives, not just Allied soldiers’ lives but the lives of Japanese civilians, by dropping nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also put the other would-be tyrants of the world on notice that we had a weapon that could end any war and that we would use it whenever we felt it necessary.

The truth is that deterrence, as Roger Simon says, is the nuclear weapon’s most powerful use. The possibility that we could unleash nuclear hell on an enemy when we decided it was appropriate meant that our enemies had to fear pushing our limits. We almost certainly would used our nuclear weapons if another nation decided to attack us with weapons that were already considered outside the laws of war. The nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War, though trying, was far preferable to having our cities obliterated by an enemy unafraid of us. We have used them once, we can say to the world, and we may use them again. Do not try our patience overmuch.

Until now. President Barack Obama has delivered a much different message, one of weakness and immaturity, and a shocking lack of understanding of strategy or human nature. Now, a nation may do whatever it wishes, so long as it has signed Obama’s precious piece of paper We can’t even use our nukes to enforce the treaty itself. Any threat we might make is empty, and don’t think for a second that Mad Mahmoud, Kim Jong-Il, and the rest of the bloody-handed murderers and would-be tyrants haven’t figured that out already. There is no doubt that Vladimir Putin, who was neck-deep in the Cold War as a member of the KGB when Barack Obama was a drug-using high school slacker, has his number.

What makes this story all the more amazing is that he seems to have spent no real time pondering our nuclear policy toward Russia and China. He didn’t even read the policy until “some months” after he took over. You might remember that “some months” after he took over would have been about the same time he was mired in the Obamacare push or the Cap and Trade trial balloon or the auto industry takeover or the punish the rich banker initiative, or passing the Stimulus bribe and payback package. I’m not exactly brimming with confidence that he read it very thoroughly. He was busy with things he considered far more important than his duties as Commander-in-Chief. Hooray for that, huh?

Other Posts of Interest:

• Syria Could Have Had A Couple Nukes, Thanks to North Korea
• I Think They Might Need to Review What the Word “Protect” Means
• I See What You Did There, Mr. President

Tags: Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, President Barack Obama

Category: President Barack Obama, The World At Large