IS THIS REALLY ARMS CONTROL? PETER HUESSEY
January 22, 2010
Exclusive: Real Arms Control
Peter Huessy
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few major media publications that regularly bring to the attention of its readers important issues on nuclear deterrence and arms control. One of its chief concerns has been the future direction of U.S. nuclear weapons and arms control policy and the continued lack of support for the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear enterprise. In that light, the op-editorial of January 20, 2009, “How to Protect Our Nuclear Deterrent,” from former Secretary of Defense William Perry, two former Secretaries of State, George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, is a welcome call for enhancing the very nuclear deterrent the importance of which they, (the op-ed authors) once appeared to be calling into question.
However, the op-ed is faulty on a number of serious nuclear policy matters, four of which deserve consideration:
(1) The reductions in deployed nuclear weapons to 1,500-1,675, as are being contemplated in a new treaty between the U.S. and Russia, are welcome but largely beside the point;
(2) The implied parallel reductions in nuclear capable delivery platforms, such as in missiles, submarines or bombers, however, have the potential to dramatically increase strategic instability and increase the likelihood of the prompt use of nuclear weapons in a crisis by markedly reducing the robustness of the U.S. deployed nuclear force;
(3) The treaty’s failure to address the huge Russian advantage in tactical nuclear weapons – numbering in the many thousands – leaves our European allies, especially those in the Russian “near abroad,” vulnerable to intimidation and blackmail from Moscow and may seriously undermine our extended deterrent with grave implications for future nuclear proliferation; and most importantly,
(4) The proposed reductions in nuclear forces have virtually nothing to do with the nuclear terrorist threats we face from the emerging nuclear weapons states Iran and North Korea, their terrorist allies and their complicit accomplices in Russia, Cuba, China, Syria, and Venezuela.
For example, Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology has been aided with financial and investment help, increased trade and cooperative military and economic relations from these countries, as well as from elements of the international business community such as Credit Suisse, recently fined hundreds of millions of dollars for violating UN imposed economic sanctions. A Chinese firm was indicted on 118 counts by Robert Morgenthau, the attorney for the City of New York in April of 2009 for aiding Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. Iran is also at war with Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, as it sponsors, supports and directs terror attacks against military American forces, as well as Israeli and Lebanese civilians. Tehran’s mullahs and revolutionary guards’ corps are leaders of a criminal regime with totalitarian aims animated by a bloody Islamic vision rooted in the 8th century. Whatever numbers of reduced nuclear weapons are deployed by the U.S. has no bearing on Iran’s brutal and fascist aims – except that a weakening of our deterrent is an open invitation for their continued aggression and murder.
As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute eloquently argued in the Wall Street Journal recently, the U.S. and its allies must remove the economic and financial oxygen from the Iranian economy through a full scale economic campaign of divestment as called for in part by legislation in Congress chiefly sponsored by Sens. Kyl and Lieberman. Such measures along with strong, including pre-emptive, military action against Iran, has the real possibility of eliminating the regime now in Iran. Most Americans would conclude that would amount to real “arms control.”
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland
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