A staple of the Left (to which Obama swore fealty to) in the early 1980’s, was nuclear disarmament. Of course the fact that nuclear weapons prevented World War III and a flood of Soviet tanks from rolling into Western Germany was never the issue for them. The key was that the West be vulnerable to blackmail and agression.
by Charles Krauthammer
It’s a lame-duck session. Time is running out. Unemployment is high, the economy is dangerously weak and, with five weeks to go, no one knows what tax anyone will be paying on everything from income to dividends to death when the current rates expire Jan. 1. And what is the president demanding that Congress pass as “a top priority”? To what did he devote his latest weekly radio address? Ratification of his New START treaty.
Good grief. Even among national security concerns, New START is way down at the bottom of the list. From the naval treaties of the 1920s to this day, arms control has oscillated between mere symbolism at its best to major harm at its worst, with general uselessness being the norm.
The reason is obvious. The problem is never the weapon; it is the nature of the regime controlling the weapon. That’s why no one stays up nights worrying about British nukes, while everyone worries about Iranian nukes.
In Soviet days, arms control at least could be justified as giving us something to talk about when there was nothing else to talk about, symbolically relieving tensions between mortal enemies. It could be argued that it at least had a soporific and therapeutic effect in the age of “the balance of terror.”
But in post-Soviet days? The Russians are no longer an existential threat. A nuclear exchange between Washington and Moscow is inconceivable. What difference does it make how many nukes Russia builds? If they want to spend themselves into penury creating a bloated nuclear arsenal, be our guest.
President Obama insists that New START is important as a step toward his dream of a nuclear-free world. Where does one begin? A world without nukes would be the ultimate nightmare. We voluntarily disarm while the world’s rogues and psychopaths develop nukes in secret. Just last week we found out about a hidden, unknown, highly advanced North Korean uranium enrichment facility. An ostensibly nuclear-free world would place these weapons in the hands of radical regimes that would not hesitate to use them – against a civilized world that would have given up its deterrent.
Read the rest: The irrelevance of START
Caroline Glick believes that Obama’s world is getting rocked every day and that he is as clueless as ever as to what real evil is all about.
by Caroline Glick
Crises are exploding throughout the world. And the leader of the free world is making things worse.
On the Korean peninsula, North Korea just upended eight years of State Department obfuscation by showing a team of US nuclear scientists its collection of thousands of state of the art centrifuges installed in their Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
And just to top off the show, as Stephen Bosworth, US President Barack Obama’s point man on North Korea was busily arguing that this revelation is not a crisis, the North fired an unprovoked artillery barrage at South Korea, demonstrating that actually, it is a crisis. But the Obama administration remains unmoved. On Tuesday Defense Secretary Robert Gates thanked his South Korean counterpart Kim Tae-young for showing “restraint.” Thursday, Kim resigned in disgrace for that restraint.
The US has spoken strongly of not allowing North Korea’s aggression to go unanswered. But in practice, its only answer is to try to tempt North Korea back to feckless multilateral disarmament talks that will go nowhere because China supports North Korean armament. Contrary to what Obama and his advisors claim, China does not share the US’s interest in denuclearizing North Korea.
Consequently, Beijing will not lift a finger to achieve that goal.
[…]
Due to this thinking, as far as the Obama administration is concerned the US should stick to its failed sanctions policy and continue its failed attempts to cut a nuclear deal with the mullahs.
As Michael Ledeen noted last week at Pajamas Media, this boilerplate assertion, backed by no evidence whatsoever is what passes for strategic wisdom in Washington as Iran completes its nuclear project. And this US refusal to understand the policy implications of popular rejection of the regime is what brings State Department wise men and women to the conclusion that the US has no dog in this fight. As State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley told the Wall Street Journal this week, the parliament’s bid to impeach Ahmadinejad was nothing more than the product of “rivalries within the Iranian government.”
Then there is Lebanon. Since Ahmadinejad’s visit last month, it is obvious that Iran is now the ruler of Lebanon and that it exerts its authority over the country through its Hizbullah proxy. Hizbullah’s open threats to overthrow Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government if its role in assassinating his father in 2005 is officially acknowledged just make this tragic reality more undeniable. And yet, the Obama administration continues to deny that Iran controls Lebanon.
Read the rest: Rocking Obama’s World
