With the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorated two weeks ago, it's important that we take time to reflect, to remember and to commit to a nuclear weapons-free world. On August 6th, John Loretz at IPPNW wrote a poignant piece on remembering the hibakusha on the IPPNW blog. He said:
We need reminders. Some of us may need them more than others at this moment in time, especially political leaders who have embraced the goal of a world without nuclear weapons only to be criticized and even ridiculed by those who cling to the bomb as something of value. Nuclear deterrence as a foundation for security and stability ... has always required a sanitized language. Does anyone really want to look at that diorama too closely as the human, rather than the strategic, meaning of deterrence? Doesn’t it ask us a little too insistently whether we value our humanity more than strategic advantage?
This sense of a shared humanity -- one that transcends geographic boundaries, languages, cultures, religions and political ideologies -- is something I have stressed before. And for those who still cannot agree with the idea that "deterrence" is an inherently flawed policy that can no longer apply to our post-Cold War, post-9/11 world -- and believe me, there are many such people in our government -- they need only to look at one of the most brilliant and cogent arguments for nuclear disarmament, which comes to us now from J. Peter Scoblic, writing in the LA Times. You can get the full text here, but below is the main point:
Despite potential flash points with nations such as Russia (over Georgia) or China (over Taiwan), it would be lunacy to engage in [conventional] combat with either because of the risk of escalation to a nuclear conflict. Abolishing nuclear weapons would obviously not make conflict with those states a good idea, but it would dramatically increase American freedom of action in a crisis. That should make hawks, with their strong faith in the efficacy of American military power, very happy ... American conservatives cling to our arsenal as though it gives us great sway over foreign countries. Yet when our conventional power has proved insufficient, nukes have done little to augment our influence abroad.
Scoblic presents disarmament not as an option, but as a necessary move that should be embraced by conservatives who tout and advocate for the conventional military superiority of the United States. In other words, disarmament is no longer the stuff hippie dreams are made of.
I have also made reference to the flawed nature of deterrence, arguing that in the end, nuclear weapons haven't prevented conflict from taking place. Wars have still happened, blood has still been shed. The only thing that has been deterred by the US nuclear arsenal is a nuclear attack from another country. But violence is still widespread, conventional wars have still taken place, and the United States has found itself mired in more than one very messy situation overseas, with no real competitive or relative advantage provided by its nuclear weapons (I'm specifically thinking of the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars).
Cold War theories simply don't hold up anymore in a post-9/11, asymmetric-warfare environment. Enemies are harder to identify and even harder to penalize -- this ambiguity creates a vacuum in which nonstate actors (such as rogue states, deranged individuals, terrorist cells, etc) have the potential to act with impunity. Nuclear terrorism, therefore, is one of the greatest threats faced by all of humanity.
Fortunately, we have a President who is committed to eliminating the dangers posed by nuclear terrorism specifically, and by weapons proliferation more generally. It is now high time that we ask ourselves what the strategic value really is of possessing nuclear weapons in this day and age.
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