| 来源类型 | Article
|
| 规范类型 | 评论
|
| A Dangerous, Short-Sighted Policy |
| Richard Perle
|
| 发表日期 | 2010-04-13
|
| 出版年 | 2010
|
| 语种 | 英语
|
| 摘要 | One year ago, President Obama told a Prague audience that, “To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy. . . .”
Yet last week, the president (a) signed an arms-control agreement with Russia that is a nearly perfect example of Cold War thinking; (b) announced a nuclear-weapons doctrine that does almost nothing to reduce the role of these weapons in a largely unchanged national security strategy; and (c) moved to abandon or diminish essential modernization of our aging arsenal. This is a dangerous, short-sighted policy that rejects or marginalizes the most urgent recommendations of the William Perry-James Schlesinger 2009 bilateral commission on nuclear forces.
With the new START treaty, the administration has continued the now senseless practice of fixing the size and character of our nuclear forces not by analyzing what is necessary for our security, but by reaching a bilateral treaty with Russia. This is exactly what we did during the Cold War when the most important issue facing our nuclear deterrent was whether its size and character was adequate to deter the nuclear forces of the Soviet Union.
But no one believes the threat we face today comes from Russia’s arsenal. It simply does not matter how many weapons Russia has.
What does matter, as we face increasing danger from nuclear powers like North Korea now, and Iran all too soon, is whether we have the right forces for our defense. This includes defensive as well as offensive weapons.
To the degree that an otherwise unimportant Cold War relic like the new START treaty limits our freedom to optimize our defenses, it will diminish rather than increase our safety. In this regard, Vladimir Putin’s threat to abandon the treaty if he doesn’t like our defensive forces is troubling. Militarily, it wouldn’t matter if Russia withdrew from the treaty. But Mr. Putin could gain powerful leverage by threatening to do so since Mr. Obama has hyped the treaty’s importance, claiming, without a shred of evidence, that it will restrain the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries.
Ironically, the president’s exaggerated claims for the new treaty may be just the opening that thoughtful senators like Jon Kyl need to overcome the administration’s lackadaisical attitude toward achieving a force that is secure, safe and reliable. Mr. Kyl is demanding an adequately funded program to implement the Perry-Schlesinger nuclear recommendations–especially the development of a warhead to replace our most antiquated weapons, and modernization of our weapons laboratories–as a condition for ratifying the treaty. And he has enough senators supporting him to make it happen.
Not a bad trade: A treaty of little consequence for a safe, secure and reliable deterrent that may actually make us safer.
Richard Perle is a resident fellow at AEI. |
| 主题 | Foreign and Defense Policy
; Europe and Eurasia
|
| 标签 | Cold War
; National security
; New START
; North Korea
; nuclear power
; Richard Perle
; Russia
; Vladimir Putin
|
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/a-dangerous-short-sighted-policy/
|
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
|
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
|
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/248859
|
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Richard Perle. A Dangerous, Short-Sighted Policy. 2010.
|
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