On June 19th, in Berlin, speaking to a crowd of German pacifists, Barack Obama delivered a cretinous speech calling for the total nuclear disarmament of the United States and for creating a fantasy “world without nuclear weapons”. Indeed, disarming the US completely has been his goal since the beginning of his presidency.
Obama claims that such world is realistically achievable and would be more peaceful and more secure than the current world; that cutting the US nuclear arsenal – even unilaterally – and refusing to modernize what remains of this arsenal is the way to achieve it; and that if the US disarms itself, other countries will follow suit and be nice enough to disarm themselves, too – they will be convinced by “the power of America’s moral example” and “American leadership.”
All of that is utter garbage.
Firstly, despite Obama’s deep unilateral cuts in America’s nuclear deterrent, NOBODY is following his “example” and “moral leadership” – because nobody cares about them. Other countries, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan, care only about their military power and their national interests. In fact, they (correctly) see America’s unilateral disarmament as a sign of weakness. That makes them more likely to build up, rather than cut or dismantle, their own arsenals.
As even Jimmy Carter’s SECDEF, Harold Brown (himself a nuclear scientists who designed some of America’s warheads), says, “When we build, they build. When we cut, they build.”
Indeed, Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan are presently all GROWING and MODERNIZING their arsenals, as are India and probably Israel, while Iran relentlessly continues pursuing nuclear weapons. North Korea has even explicitly announced it will grow its arsenal, saying so AFTER the latest crisis and AFTER Obama’s latest Berlin promise to cut America’s further.
Even the pacifist Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Danish pacifist Hans Kristensen (now blogging for FAS) admit that all other nuclear powers are currently modernizing their nuclear arsenals (Kristensen even speaks of “rampant modernization”) and utterly refuse to scrap or even cut these arsenals. SIPRI also admits that China is growing its nuclear stockpile, but vastly understates it at just 250 warheads.
Real experts, like former DOD chief nuclear strategist Dr Philip Karber and retired Russian general Viktor Yesin estimate that China has at least 1,600-1,800, and possibly up to 3,000, nuclear warheads, not the 240-400 often claimed by Western disarmament advocates – representing massive growth since the 1980s.
What’s more, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and India refuse to even discuss signing any arms limitation treaties, let alone opening their arsenals to inspection or admitting how many weapons they have!
What’s more, China is hiding much of its arsenal in a network of 3,000 miles of tunnels and bunkers!
And now, according to Russian and American analysts alike, including Vasiliy Kashin and Foreign Policy’s John Reed, China is developing a stealthy intercontinental bomber that could strike the continental US. The Chinese air force has even created mockup models of this bomber. Hardly signs of China willing to disarm itself.
In addition, Russia is blatantly violating the INF Treaty by developing and testing an IRBM, and also violating the CFE Treaty! How can we trust Russia to comply with New START and reciprocate the newest cuts proposed by Obama when Russia is not complying with existing arms reduction treaties? We can’t!
NOBODY is following Obama’s pointless, useless example – because they know that unilateral disarmament is a road to inviting aggression and subjugation, a road to disaster – not to security and peace. Only Obama doesn’t realize that – or he does, and is disarming America unilaterally and deliberately precisely to invite aggression against America.
The goal of “a world without nuclear weapons” isn’t just “distant”; it’s utterly unrealistic and ridiculous.
The world is not “moving towards nuclear zero”; it isn’t even on the beginning of the road to nuclear zero, and never will be. The world (other than Obama’s America) is going in the EXACTLY OPPOSITE direction: more nuclear weapons and more nuclear-armed states.
Obama’s legacy will not be “a world without nuclear weapons”, or even a planet going in that direction. Obama’s legacy will be a planet going in the exactly opposite direction, and quite possibly, a nuclear-armed Iran.
Obama has asked Putin to agree to further nuclear arsenal reductions. But Putin’s Russia continually and stubbornly refuses – because it knows it is military strength, not weakness, that brings about security, peace, and global influence. It is also loathe to cut its nuclear arsenal while China retains its own large stockpile – as the Kremlin even pointed out in its reaction to Obama’s proposal.
Since Putin came to power, Russia has been steadily rebuilding its arsenal. Under the widely touted New START treaty, Russia was allowed to build up its nuclear arsenal – both the warheads and the delivery systems – and has done exactly that, and continues to do so to this day.
Currently, Russia has 434 multiple-warhead ICBMs (collectively capable of delivering 1,684 warheads to the US), 251 intercontinental bombers (Tu-95, Tu-160, Tu-22M) capable of delivering 7 warheads each, 14 ballistic missile submarines (16-20 missiles each, each missile capable of carrying 4-12 warheads depending on the missile type), 2,800 strategic warheads for the forementioned systems, and up to 4,000 tactical warheads deliverable by a wide range of systems: tactical aircraft (Su-24/25/34), short-range missiles, submarines, cruise missiles, surface ships, artillery pieces, etc.
Russia is not just modernizing, but building up its nuclear arsenal. It is producing additional ICBMs and bombers and producing newer sub-launched missiles (Liner and Bulava) capable of carrying far more warheads than previous generations of missiles. Likewise, its land-based road-mobile Yars-M ICBMs can carry 10 warheads, versus only 1 for previous generation Topol missiles.
And yet, Obama has prohibited US ICBMs from carrying more than 1 warhead each!
So under Obama’s policies, Russia is not cutting anything. The US is the only country in the world cutting its nuclear arsenal.
Moscow is also developing an intermediate range ballistic missile in violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits such development.
In addition, Russia is developing missile defenses – the same kind of defensive stuff which Russia doesn’t want the US to deploy – which would help Russia mop up the few remaining US missiles that might survive a Russian nuclear first strike.
Russia absolutely refuses to even consider any cuts to its arsenal (indeed, it categorically rejected Obama’s proposal immediately after he made it); if it agrees to a new treaty, it – like New START – will require cuts only in America’s arsenal, i.e. America’s unilateral disarmament. No wonder Obama plans to do so by “executive agreement” without Senate ratification; he knows even the current Senate, even with 54 Democrats, is unlikely to ratify such treaty. So he plans to (illegally) avoid the Senate altogether, making it irrelevant. (And the Senate allows him to do so.)
Meanwhile, America’s allies around the world, from South Korea to Japan to Europe are all becoming increasingly worried and are now seriously mulling developing their own nuclear weapons. 66.5% of South Koreans already want to do so. Japan has recently opened a facility allowing it to produce enough material for 3,600 warheads if need be.
So NOBODY is reciprocating Obama’s unilateral cuts. NOBODY. This is what always happens when one makes unilateral cuts in one’s own arsenal; the same has happened everytime America tried unilateral cuts, including the 1970s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Since the Cold War’s end, the US has reduced its nuclear arsenal by over 75%*; nobody has reciprocated. Russia agreed to some cuts during the 1990s, when it was weak; it is now steadily building its arsenal up.
So we know very well what the result will be if Obama cuts America’s arsenal further: nobody will reciprocate. America will get much weaker and much less secure, and the world much less peaceful, as a result, contrary to Obama’s blatant lies.
And contrary to his blatant lies stated in Berlin, a US arsenal cut further by a whopping 1/3 – to just 1,000 warheads – will be woefully inadequate to provide for nuclear deterrence, given Russia’s and China’s large arsenals, North Korea’s nascent one, and Iran’s nuclear program. This will leave US allies no choice but to develop their own arsenals.
It is military STRENGTH, not weakness and disarmament, that makes a nation safe. Cutting one’s own weapon arsenals only makes one weaker and less secure. This is especially true with nuclear weapons – a business in which no margin of risk is acceptable.
There is absolutely no reason at all to cut America’s nuclear arsenal any further, ESPECIALLY not now, when all potential adversaries – Russia, China, and North Korea – are all steadily building up and modernizing their arsenals of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and when Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. It would be decidedly AGAINST America’s national security interest.
Obama falsely claims a world without nuclear weapons would be more peaceful and secure. That is also utterly false. The world actually was “nuclear-free” from the dawn of humanity until 1945 – and yet, that didn’t prevent the bloodiest, most destructive wars in human history from happening: the Peloponesian War, the Punic Wars, the Hundred Years War, the Wars of Religion the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the two World Wars. 60 million people died in WW2 alone.
All of human history prior to 1945 is one of incessant wars between the world’s great powers. But since 1945, the advent of nukes, there has been NO war between the great powers (US, Russia, Britain, France, China).
And it didn’t happen by accident or pure luck. It happened because nuclear weapons are here – they’re restraining the world’s leading powers far more effectively than treaties or the useless UN.
Eliminating nuclear weapons would mean eliminating the sole meaningful restraint on the great powers – one that forces them to coexist rather than fight each other. A restraint that has never failed, not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when US nuclear deterrence and the naval quarantine of Cuba forced Khrushchev to back down.
A world without nuclear weapons would be the pre-1945 world, with no restraint on the great powers, which would feel free to go at each other’s throats again. It would be far less secure and peaceful than today’s world.
But fear not, such a world will never exist.
As I stated above, none of the world’s nuclear powers, other than Obama’s America, is cutting its arsenal or is willing to disarm itself. NOBODY is following Obama’s “lead” to “Global Zero.” Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel are all building up.
So a world without nuclear weapons will NEVER exist. N-E-V-E-R. (Unless even more powerful, and cheaper, weapons are invented – in which case the Left will move on to prohibit America and her allies from developing them while not opposing their acquisition by America’s adversaries.) No amount of willpower or wishful thinking will change that fact.
“A world without nuclear weapons” is an utter, childish fantasy, just like a world without hunger, thirst, disease, or crime. It will never happen.
Unfortunately, it is possible to create a world without AMERICAN nuclear weapons – and that is what Traitor Obama really intends to do, by disarming America unilaterally.
He must be stopped at all costs. Congress should attach a firm and total PROHIBITION on any further cuts in America’s nuclear deterrent – whether unilaterally, by “executive agreement”, or by treaty. Period. Any lawmaker who does not support such prohibition must be voted out of office. Period. Additionally, Obama should be impeached and removed from office.
Do not allow Obama to mislead you, Dear Readers: his unilateral disarmament of America will impress nobody and will only encourage adversaries to build up their arsenals and to commit aggression against America and its allies. And it will certainly not lead to a world without nuclear weapons – which will never exist.
*This 75% cut in America’s nuclear arsenal since 1991 also utterly disproves Obama’s false claim that the US still relies on “Cold War postures” – had that been true, which it isn’t, the US would’ve still kept over 20,000 nuclear weapons.
