Another Dumb Policy Labeled a "Win"

The new treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear warheads is pointless and dumb.

For more on that, see the blog entry by Jamie Fly, exec direc of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Russia is reducing nukes anyway, because Russia is broke. In this process, the US may further restrict itself from providing it and its allies antimissle protection. The general messing over of loyal democracies and advocates of democracy (Czech Republic, Poland, Israel, the Dalai Lama) continues apace in the Obama White House as BHO tries to prove the contrarian notion that you can win peace by being the Anti-Bush, charming bad guys while dissing your friends.

The whole Obama nuclear policy is a utopian joke. Per BHO, bad guys want nukes because the US has nukes. Per SWNID, bad guys want nukes because nukes kill lots of people at once, whether the US has them or not, and so provide the Ultimate Threat needed to make the masses cower before the Supreme Leader (e.g. Saddam was willing to risk his rule to perpetuate the lie that he had WMD, so necessary was the threat of their use to his hold on power). As thoughtful people have noted since the rise of the Nazis, the military strength of democracies doesn't induce totalitarians to badness. It restrains them from acting on their badness.

Just as you can't bend a cost curve downward by increasing demand with third-party payers, so you can't have a world without nuclear weapons once the knowledge of nuclear physics exists. Baroness Thatcher observed decades ago that if we abolished nukes, at the first sign of war nations would rush to build nukes ASAP, a more dangerously unstable situation than exists when democratic governments possess sufficient nuclear weapons to assure the destruction of any regime that would use its nukes.

Just as you can't pacify a dictator or terrorist with appeasement, so you can't with moral example. He who bears the sword bears it not in vain.

Obama would be better off focusing on practical means of nonproliferation than pursing utopian visions heralded by empty treaties that only make it harder for friends to stay friendly. Please.