Who Said Nukes Are 'Totally Irrational, Inhumane, Destructive'? Guess Again

Jerry Slater has a smart piece in the Buffalo News saying that we can deter a nuclear-armed Iran but that deterrence is not the answer, disarmament is. Slater has a supple grasp on history. Some excerpts:

Suppose... that nothing can force or induce Iran to change its policies, and within a few years it begins producing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them? The task would then be to deter Iran from ever using them, or giving them to uncontrollable terrorists. There is no reason to doubt the effectiveness of deterrence, meaning the implied or even explicit threat of massive nuclear retaliation if Iran or terrorist groups allied with it ever used nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States.

So far, deterrence has worked throughout the post-World War II nuclear age. No state has dared to use its nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states, let alone against states that can retaliate in kind. Nonetheless, deterrence is a very bad way to continue to run the world. Aside from the greatly magnified difficulties of maintaining a stable deterrence system in a world of increasing numbers of nuclear states as well as, possibly, nuclear terrorist groups, we now know that even the relatively stable and simple two-state U. S.-Soviet mutual deterrence system came perilously close to breaking down on several occasions during the Cold War — during the Cuban missile crisis for sure, but also because of several hair-raising accidents, miscalculations and misunderstandings of radar, communications and other data.

Since deterrence can fail in many different ways, the only true solution to the problem of nuclear weapons is to get rid of them. It used to be thought that only woolly-headed liberals believed that global nuclear disarmament was a good idea or even possible, but Ronald Reagan began the process of changing all that in the mid- 1980s when he called for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, which he considered to be “totally irrational, totally inhumane [and] possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

Perhaps inspired by Reagan’s vision, recently an elite group of four pillars of the establishment — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn (two former secretaries of state, a former secretary of defense and the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) — have been writing, lecturing and lobbying on the need for the United States to take the lead in pressing for global nuclear disarmament.

Comments

[Mordecai]

The very first sentence in this argument encompasses a huge lie:
"Suppose... that nothing can force or induce Iran to change its policies, and within a few years it begins producing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them?

The unanimous assessment of all 16 intelligence agencies is that Iran is NOT pursuing a nuclear weapons program. If Iran does not change it's current policies it will not have nuclear weapon five, ten, or fifty years from now.

Iran is pursuing its right as a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. It's program is safeguarded by the IAEA and it is not possible to enrich to the 95% level needed for a bombe (compared to the 5% level needed for power) without having it detected by the IAEA.

[Eva Smagacz]

An admirable principle and and an admirable aim. We could start by some pierestroyka and request that India, Pakistan and Israel sign up to IAEA and open themselves up for regular inspections of their WMDs.

[Richard Witty]

No nukes is definitely good nukes.

No nuclear weapons, no nuclear power either.

Phil,
How far do you live from Indian Point?

[charles Keating]

Some of the leaders of the minority parties in Germany have recently asked the US to take out its nukes stored all over Germany, mostly at US military bases there. We have such arrangements with quite a few western european nations. An additional argument favoring denuking is the shoddy security and maintenance discovered in the last few years.

When will the US live up to its own agreements concerning nonproliferation?

[charles Keating]

Should be of interest now to watch what Pakistan does with its nukes under the regime...