Nuclear Freeze: Making the World Safe for Tyrants by Peter Huessy
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2658/nuclear-freeze
Over thirty years ago, the “Nuclear Freeze” was launched across Europe and in the United States. Its leaders pushed for an end to the US nuclear modernization program of President Reagan, knowing full well that an already modernized Soviet nuclear weapons enterprise would markedly shift what Moscow called the correlation of forces distinctly in its favor. Despite millions of dollars funneled into the campaign by the Kremlin, Reagan and his allies, most notably Britain’s Prime Minister Thatcher and Germany’s Helmut Kohl stood firm. The allies deployed what were known as INF forces in Europe, including US Pershing and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, in Britain, Germany, Italy and Holland, and faced down the Soviet deployment of nearly 2,000 such rockets in both Europe and Asia.
While deploying such missiles was a close call–in the US Congress nearly 80% of Democrats refused to support the procurement of the missiles to be deployed in Europe—Reagan pulled the rug out from under the freeze advocates by proposing a “Zero-Zero” option. The US President said the US would refrain from deploying such missiles if the Soviets withdrew and eliminated all their already deployed missiles and stopped any further build-up.
At least two key parties were outraged. The Soviets walked out of the arms control talks then taking place in Geneva. They claimed Reagan was risking war. Not to be outdone, a leading advocate of the nuclear freeze, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, echoed these Soviet concerns. He claimed that Reagan was totally uninterested in arms control and was, as Moscow claimed, risking war.
History, of course, vindicated Reagan. The Soviets eventually backed down, and all INF types of missiles were removed in the first treaty ever eliminating an entire class of nuclear forces — but only after Reagan hung tough in arms control negotiations in Geneva and Iceland, and also stuck to his guns and deployed the US missiles in Europe. In addition, the Soviets knew that a full-scale modernization effort of our bombers, submarines and land based missiles, known as our strategic nuclear deterrent, was also underway.
In the mid-1980s, during congressional floor consideration of a nuclear freeze bill, the proponents were asked what part of the strategic bomber, then the mainstay of the air-breathing leg of the US nuclear force — the B-52 — would be frozen. Did it include the engines, the wings, the avionics or the electronics? The freeze advocates were so flummoxed they withdrew the bill from the House floor and then proceeded to write a 50 page paper on exactly what parts of the US bomber fleet would be allowed to be modernized and what parts would be frozen.
By the time this new white paper got to the House floor, it was after midnight. Opponents of the nuclear freeze, including more and more Democrats, started to ridicule the idea of the freeze. Were the Soviets going to follow suit? Then, House Armed Services Committee chairman Les Aspin, later to become President Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense, once said that if any legislative proposal ran into what he called the “snicker factor,” it would be considered “dead on arrival.” And so the nuclear freeze was pronounced dead.
Today, however, it is back. Congressman Frank and Congressman Markey, both far-left Massachusetts Democrats, are once again calling for a nuclear freeze.
Although, as in 1981, the US has an entire strategic nuclear force that desperately needs modernization and replacement, Frank and Markey argue that the Russians are no longer a threat, and that we can therefore safely eliminate $200 billion over ten years in strategic nuclear modernization funding. Just coincidentally, this is exactly the amount promised by this administration a year ago for all future strategic nuclear modernization. The announcement was made during the debate over the New START treaty with Russia, concluded to reduce the number of nuclear weapons to 1,550 on each side from the 2,200-level agreed to during the Bush administration in the Moscow treaty.
Now, Frank and Markey are not claiming the administration is not interested in arms control. And they are not claiming that the US is trying to blow up the world. No, they are saying the US does not need these weapons anymore. As they are saying this, however, according to the International Atomic Energy Administration, Iran is moving closer and closer to possessing nuclear weapons.
China it has now been revealed, may have not the 30-40 nuclear warheads that its friends have claimed: it may have as many as 3,000. Georgetown University students, from public sources, especially Goggle maps, have discovered thousands of miles of underground tunnels in China where nuclear missiles and warheads could potentially be hidden.
Pakistan is increasingly unstable and its nuclear arsenal of at least 200 nuclear weapons may be coming closer to falling into the hands of a Taliban type of government.
In Venezuela, a rocket facility is reported to be planned capable of launching an Iranian made rocket toward the United States. The Iranian Shahab missile has the range to reach from Venezuela precisely into downtown Miami — a “Jewish rich” target, according to one Venezuelan source.
Then there is North Korea: according to senior US military and civilian leaders, it has the capability to strike the United States with its ballistic missiles, even as it further develops an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
And finally, we have the attorney for the City of New York twice having indicted Chinese companies for selling ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology to Iran, and the UN telling us that Russia is also complicit in assisting Iran’s nuclear program.
A nuclear freeze was a bad idea back in the early 1980s. It is a bad idea today. Now, instead of millions from Moscow supporting the idea, we have millions from a dozen or so organizations, many basically solely-owned subsidiaries of the empire of George Soros, that have endorsed Mr. Frank and Mr. Markey’s call for a nuclear freeze. They all seek to restrict America’s power and strength as they make the world save for tyrants.
Nuclear dangers are gathering, not the least of which is a potential electro-magnetic pulse, or EMP attack. One nuclear EMP detonated 200 miles above the Midwest, for example, could like a short, intense stroke of lightening, create an electric field that would totally burn out the entire electrical and communications systems of the United States – computers, cars, planes, electrical appliances, homes, offices, prisons — no electricity, no means of transportation, no mean of communication.
The administration was right to pledge over $200 billion in modernization money to implement the much-needed deterrent capability that would be the companion to the new START treaty approved in December, 2010.
We must keep this pledge and fully implement the strategic sustainment and modernization plan of which it is the foundation. As the new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently warned, to do any less could be “catastrophic.”
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