Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

April 6, 2010 By Fausta

No nukes even in bio, chem, or cyber attack

Obama thinks this will make the world join hands, never use a biological, chemical, or, say, a crippling electromagnetic pulse against the US, and sing Kumbaya:

Obama has announced that he would not use nuclear weapons against any of those attacks as long as the attacking country is non-nuclear and in compliance with with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms (emphasis added):

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

What do you have cabinet members, such as defense secretary? So you can overrule them and show them who’s boss, and doing this:

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

How will The Won respond to such an attack?

By sticking his head up his *ss even further:

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons.

Of course, today’s announcement makes you wonder what does he mean by a combination of old and new conventional weapons, since probably Obama thinks Indiana Jones was being unfair – surely Obama would not bring a gun to a knife fight,

Why is this announcement so important, and such a strategic blunder? Scott Johnson explains,

>On its face, that is unbelievably stupid. A country attacks us with biological weapons, and we stay our hand because they are “in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty”? That is too dumb even for Barack Obama. The administration hedged its commitment with qualifications suggesting that if there actually were a successful biological or chemical attack, it would rethink its position. The Times puts its finger on what is wrong with the administration’s announcement:

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war.

That’s exactly right. The cardinal rule, when it comes to nuclear weapons, is keep ’em guessing. We want our enemies to believe that we may well be crazy enough to vaporize them, given sufficient provocation; one just can’t tell. There is a reason why that ambiguity has been the American government’s policy for more than 50 years. Obama cheerfully tosses overboard the strategic consensus of two generations.

Or pretends to, anyway. Does anyone doubt that the administration would use nukes in a heartbeat if it considered such measures necessary? I don’t. The problem is that when the time comes to actually use nuclear weapons, it is too late. The danger here is not that the Obama administration has really gone pacifist. On the contrary, the significance of today’s announcement appears to be entirely symbolic–just one more chance to preen. The problem is that our enemies understand symbolism and maybe take it too seriously. To them, today’s announcement is another sign that our government has gone soft, and one more inducement to undertake aggressive action against the United States.

Seems to me several non-nuclear states just got an incentive to get creative while complying with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The world is now an even more dangerous place.

UDPATE
Frank Gaffney:

I believe that the most alarming aspect of the Obama denuclearization program, however, is its explicit renunciation of new U.S. nuclear weapons — an outcome that required the president to overrule his own defense secretary. Even if there were no new START treaty, no further movement on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no new wooly-headed declaratory policies, the mere fact that the United States will fail to reverse the steady obsolescence of its deterrent — and the atrophying of the skilled workforce needed to sustain it — will ineluctably achieve what is transparently President Obama’s ultimate goal: a world without American nuclear weapons.

More commentary at Jihad Watch’s post, Clueless on Deterring a Jihadist Nuclear 9/11

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, USA Tagged With: Fausta's blog, nuclear weapons, smart diplomacy

Comments

  1. GM Roper says

    April 6, 2010 at 9:34 am

    Fausta, the Won’s lack of understanding of basic human behavior is just astounding. Shades of Chamberlain. Let us hope and pray that the next Adolph is just as stupid as Obama.

  2. Bastiat Fan says

    April 6, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    What could possibly go wrong? /sarc

  3. Madcap says

    April 6, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    This man invites attack. And GM Roper is correct – it is a basic lack of understanding of human nature that is at the base of all collectivist thinking… what a fool.

  4. SukieTawdry says

    April 7, 2010 at 12:20 am

    Oh, he’s perfectly willing to bring a gun to a knife fight–“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”–but only if the fight’s against his fellow Americans.

  5. Pat Patterson says

    April 7, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    But in Chamberlain’s case even when negotiating he had increased spending on armaments and when Hitler attacked he resigned and supported Churchill to conduct the war. At what point could anyone ever imagine Pres Obama resigning over a mistake he made and then supporting someone to rectify that mistake who he clearly didn’t like?

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