START now, then move to zero
Editorial by the Brunswick Times Record published on April 18, 2010
Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Richard Klass began his military career in the early 1960s with a Cold War mindset: The Soviet Union was our nemesis and nuclear weapons were an essential deterrent to keep it at bay.
The doctrine guiding our country’s military strategy and national security policy was “mutual assured destruction” — the idea being that the threat of nuclear annihilation would keep both countries from ever using them.
But the Cold War ended 20 years. And so, the 20,000 nuclear weapons still held held collectively by the United States and Russia are a vestige of outmoded thinking that Klass believes needs to change ... sooner, rather than later.
“It’s clear to me we’re at the point where it makes sense to rid the world of nuclear weapons,” Klass said during a recent swing through Maine with Dr. Ira Helfand, co-founder and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
In recent weeks, President Obama has decisively set a new course for our nation’s nuclear weapons policies, with a series of significant and interrelated steps:
— The “New START” treaty, signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Prague on April 8, would shrink the U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 each over seven years, down about a third from the current ceiling of 2,200. The treaty must be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote of the Senate to take effect.
— The “Nuclear Posture Review,” a Pentagon-led assessment released on April 6, recognizes nuclear terrorism by extremists as a greater threat to our national security than a nuclear exchange between nations. It ceases U.S. testing of nuclear weapons and the development of new nuclear weapons platforms. It also provides an incentive for non-nuclear states to comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by stating the U.S. will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against on-nuclear states.
— The world’s first “Nuclear Security Summit,” convened by President Obama in Washington, D.C., this week. Spurred by the U.S. and Russia agreeing to dispose of 68 metric tons of excess military-grade plutonium, leaders from 47 nations attending the two-day summit signed a pledge to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years.
Klass and Helfand say these developments, and the May 3-28 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference in New York, represent a true “fork in the road” for our nation’s nuclear weapons’ policy. One path continues outdated Cold War thinking and insists on maintaining the nuclear overkill capacity embraced by the M.A.D. doctrine; the other recognizes nuclear terrorism as a greater threat and seeks to reduce nuclear arsenals worldwide eventually to zero, thereby eliminating the risk of unsecured nuclear materials getting into terrorist hands and being used to create a primitive but deadly “dirty bomb.”
“We can’t let this become an unthinking partisan issue,” says Klass. “Approving START is the first step. If that fails we’ll be in a very poor position to negotiate any kind of nuclear disarmament or nonproliferation agreement with the rest of the world.”
We agree. The Senate needs to ratify START before the August recess, in order to set the stage for an equally important ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty later this year or early next year.
Here’s a chance for Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to demonstrate leadership by voting to end outmoded Cold War nuclear policies. Our world will be far safer with less nuclear bombs in it, not more. Until we get to zero worldwide, no one should rest easy.
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