https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18611/nuclear-strategy-expertise
Prager and Kaptanoglu apparently think the “U.S. defense establishment” is less qualified than “Those who promote arms control and disarmament” like themselves.
So the philosophy of “a little child shall lead them” is prescribed for the field of nuclear strategy, just as the views of Greta Thunberg are supposed to silence the many scientists who doubt that “climate change” is an existential threat. We live in a time when the “Wokists” are at war with any expertise that contradicts their agenda, a time of unthinking egalitarianism when all opinions are supposed to matter equally (providing they are “Woke”) — and the West may die from it.
College physicists, political scientists, physicians, pediatricians, and their impassioned students who comprise much of the anti-nuclear movement typically have little or no expertise in nuclear weapons and strategy. Yet Prager and Kaptanoglu would substitute their uninformed opinions for those of national security experts who have spent professional lifetimes studying nuclear weapons, theories of nuclear conflict, nuclear exchange modeling analysis, and other disciplines related to nuclear war.
Academics and anti-nuclear activists have only themselves to blame if they are largely ignored by the national security community, because they so often falsely accuse the national security community of bad faith, conspiracies, corruption, and irrationality for disagreeing with them.
Anti-nuclear activists, if they want to be taken seriously, have an obligation to educate themselves on the facts, and to stop exaggerating and stop lying. Examples of five whoppers, and not necessarily the worst ones, that often appear in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…
The greatest existential threat is nuclear war. An example of one way to reduce the threat of nuclear war: The US should stop Iran from achieving nuclear breakout before it is too late. The US has the capability; the administration might ask the Pentagon to draw up a plan. President Joe Biden’s poll numbers would turn around overnight. The world does not need Iran, the country that Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to as the “largest state sponsor of state terrorism,” possessing nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, thanks to Biden, anti-nuclear activists already have an outsized and unwarranted influence on national security policy that threatens to undermine the credibility of U.S. nuclear deterrence, and ironically make nuclear war even more likely.
The book Guide To Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Great Power Competition, edited by Adam Lowther, belongs on the shelves of every policymaker and citizen who wants to be well informed about U.S. nuclear strategy and deterrence; rising nuclear threats from Russia and China; and what the U.S. must do to survive. The book includes chapters from 22 national security experts, many of whom served in senior Defense Department positions, and made significant contributions to deterring a nuclear World War III and ultimate victory in the Cold War.
