Here’s a pleasant Christmas thought. Why does Charles Krauthammer love nuclear weapons so much?
Obama’s difficulty in overcoming the missile defense objection will serve to temper the rest of his nuclear agenda, including U.S. entry into the test-ban treaty, and place Obama’s ultimate goal of total nuclear disarmament blessedly out of reach. Conservatives can thus take solace that their vigorous opposition to START is likely to prevent further disarmament mischief down the road. But what they cannot deny is the political boost the treaty’s ratification gives Obama today, a mere seven weeks after his Election Day debacle.
The one thing that Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama unquestionable agree about is that nuclear weapons are an abomination that imperil mankind, and that we ought to move thoughtfully and deliberatively towards a world in which our nuclear weapons are sitting in moth balls. If Krauthammer is right that “the most menacing threat of the coming century [will be] nuclear hyper-proliferation,” then we ought to get serious about disarmament and non-proliferation efforts. Missile defense is by far the less safe choice. Once you get to the point that a nuclear missile is launched, we’re pretty much screwed whether it gets shot down or not.
I agree and disagree. The main reason I see nuclear proliferation as an issue is to stop countries from pursuing them. The more nuclear powers that there are, the higher chance there is for nuclear war. However, once you already have them, it’s highly unlikely you’ll give them up. So the second reason I support disarmament is that keeping up with our nukes is excruciatingly expensive, and we don’t need as many as we have. I look at it from an economic perspective: we can blow the world up 1000 times over, so why not just limit the number until it’s down to 5 times over or something to save money?
It’s nice to imagine a world without nuclear weapons, but unless there is some sort of one-world government, it’s not going to happen. The U.S. won’t give up its weapons entirely and neither will Russia, so it’s still important to keep some of the stockpile for deterrent purposes.
Not to mention that climate change is going to fuck us all over. That could be a uniting avenue where nuclear weapons aren’t necessary, but not while the chest-thumping macho assholes are in charge. Rather than seeing it as a time to help the countries that will be fucked, I could see Republicans seeing it as a time to build up resources for America Only with their nationalist hubris and banter.
But you really don’t understand “Peace through strength”, BooMan. Disarmament threatens the US economy, while building missile defense shields both employs lots of guys on military engineering welfare, and it provides a lucrative export to other countries–even countries on our “axis of evil” proliferators list.
Here are the key facts:
Ah, yes – probably more truth than fiction here I would Imagine.
Never seen the movie but I don’t know.
The empirical evidence is in what happened after the end of the Cold War. Instead of moving to deal with the collapse of the Russian economy like was done after World War II for Germany and Japan, the Bush 41 administration ignored Russia when it was not trying to apply a shock treatment of capitalism (which backfired badly as the old apparatchiks became the new oligarchs). The Bush 41 administration ignored Afghanistan, which it helped “free” from the Soviets. And the Reagan and Bush administrations ignored the blowback from arming the mujahadeen with modern US weapons and training them in insurgent tactics as the US military understood those tactics (a brilliant step of telegraphing how the US would act when it had to do counter-insurgency).
It is an axiom of conservative philosophy that the only two legitimate functions of government are national defense and law enforcement. And that as many government services need to be run by the free market as possible. Privatized prison companies and mercenaries in the defense establishment are the result. And it can be demonstrated that in both cases things are made worse. Recidivism increases in privatized prisons, and the likelihood of failure in national security increases with the use of mercenaries (who guards the guardians). And that the profit motive that is supposed to encourage efficiency in fact encourages perpetuation of the problems that these private firms were supposed to solve.
And in this economic crisis, Republicans have been unwilling to do the sorts of infrastructure investment that is necessary to end the recession quickly but have been loading the defense budget with procurement items that the DoD says it does not need in order, the Republicans say, to save jobs.
It is clear that the current threats in the world to the continental US do not justify a $500 billion investment in the military (almost the same adjusting for foreign exchange rates as the total of all other countries combined). It is clear that this expenditure is massively disproportionate and a key part of the US deficit. It is also clear that the military has become the only allowable employer of last resort and training program for young folks out of work or lacking a first job. Otherwise there would be funding of a massive Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration effort to protect national assets, like national forests and national parks, and jobs repairing old infrastructure and building new, architecturally significant public buildings.
Krauthammer is symptomatic of, and his opinions have created, this flawed view of national security.
John Lennon was philosophically a pacifist, but he has a point in that we work hard at imagining all the possible scenarios of war and investing money in trying to deter each and every single one. But we do not devote the same resources to imagining all the possible scenarios that could lead to global security from war. And the major block to that happening is the conservative mindset represented by Krauthammer who seeks to preserve a flashy muscle-bound military unsuited to promoting actual national security.
Fortunately, this mindset has not totally taken over the US military’s thinking in the way it has that of conservatives in Congress.
One of my recurring dreams is a “Manhattan Project” focused on alternative energy production. I always enjoy your thoughtful comments, thanks TarheelDem.
“Never seen the movie but I don’t know.”
In context, probably the most important takeaway from the movie is that after the lead (Cage) loses his wife, his family, his fortune, and everything else, he calls on contacts within the federal government to clear the heat from his previous activities, and goes right back to peddling death on the hoof.
More verbal diarrhea from the craphammer…thanks, man.
It’s better that then having an ad for Dinesh D’Snooza’s latest brain dead rantings at the top of the page.
If a nuke ICBM gets shot down, where does the radiation go?
Star wars will never go away. Reagan also backed away from the no nukes idea.
First strike was all the rage back when. ALways upping the defence budget to have that capability.
“menacing threat of the coming century [will be] nuclear hyper-proliferation”
Who is not able to deconstruct that statement from a right wing Zionist like Krauthammer?
It is all about Iran, Israel’s new nemesis. It seems that Israeli nuclear capability is peaceful, but Iran’s is not. Why would anyone waste time listening to Krauthammer?