This past weekend, the New York Times published an Op-Ed entitled “New Think and Old Weapons.” The piece asks four important questions that it believes the Obama Administration’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) must address. First, what is the purpose of the United States’ current nuclear arsenal? Second, how many nuclear weapons should be reduced? Third, does the United States need new nuclear weapons? And fourth, should the United States take weapons off alert?
PNA agrees—the NPR must address these questions. To be consistent with the Administration’s declared policy, the purpose of the arsenal should be limited to deterring use by other nuclear weapons states.
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The purpose of the United States’ current nuclear arsenal should undoubtedly be restricted to deterring use by other nuclear weapon states. Such use for the arsenal, however, remains to be seen by other major global players in the nuclear arms scare. The reason for this is still due to the unecessarilly large surplus of warheads that the U.S. continues to keep. We can preach that we possess such weapons for self defense, but when we have the outlandish number of nuclear warheads that we do, the message does not carry too much weight. This is why the U.S. needs to make drastic changes in the upcoming Nuclear Prosture Review if they want to see any true progress in the current relationship with countries such as Iran, China, or North Korea.
As mentioned earlier, the U.S. should indeed have nuclear weapons in a time as dicey as this, but it should only be in case another country targets us with theirs. Therefore, we need to decrease the number of our warheads by an overwhelming amount. If the U.S. wants to send any hint of a more pacifist message, they need to cut down their arsenal by a minimum of two thirds. This is necessary to ensure any decline in the rising tensions between us and the nuclear nations of the east.
As the New York Times op-ed piece reported, only “[500] warheads is enough to wipe out the assets of Russia, which is no longer an enemy.” If that number is sufficient to defend ourselves from even the most hypothetically absurd situation as being attacked by Russia, a country who no longer demonstrates any ill will towards us, then why are we aiming for 1,000 warheads as our best case scenario, especially when we share an additional 15,000 with Russia as backup? We need to practice what we preach if we really want to preserve the nuclear stability that currently exists.
It is time to let go of the stubborn, arrogant view that the U.S. holds as having the right to possess mroe warheads than anyone since we are the superpower. We are not entitled to an unnecessary amount for this reason, especially when such a lower number of warheads has been proven by military experts to protect us in even the most dangerous situations. It is for this reason that we cannot budge from this same cycle of cold-war nonsens that has been circulating Washington since the early 1960s.
If President Obama wants to achieve the change that many of us voted for, he needs to start by altering this mindset that leads other nations to refuse to change their arsenal. I sincerely hope that such improvements are made in the upcoming NPR. so that we in turn set a better example for other countries.