The biggest threat

This is a reminder of how warped our national political priorities are right now. It's John Steinburner, "Consensual security", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Mar/Apr 2008 (not yet available online):

The countervailing deterrent operations of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces still dominate international security arrangements in operational reality, if not in public consciousness. Although the United States and Russia have declared reductions in the inventories of those forces, they are essentially as lethal as they ever have been and as actively deployed. Both countries continuously maintain several thousand nuclear weapons on alert status, and they are programmed to initiate massive bombardment within minutes and to complete it within hours. As an objective matter, that situation presents what is by far the greatest physical danger to both of the societies in question and to all others as well. According to the doctrine of deterrence, the threat provides decisive protection against deliberate assault, but it also creates the possibility of a catastrophic accident - a significant fact that is heavily discounted by disciples of the doctrine.

I'm convinced that a significant part of the blame for this should be given to the Gulf War of 1991. Just as the Cold War was ending, the US mobilized for a shooting war in the Middle East, which Old Man Bush's administration built up as a far more difficult contest than it actually was. While Old Man Bush did push forward on arms reduction arrangements with the Russians, the chest-beating and bluster around the Gulf War distracted attention from the challenge and the opportunity to reduce the threat of nuclear war through disarmament processes.

Tags: nonproliferation, nuclear nonproliferation

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